The FEAR Tracker
by Alardem
Summary: Months after a cataclysmic blast destroys Fairport, a tracker is contracted by ATC to uncover the city's paranormal mysteries. She has her own agenda, and Alma is its centerpiece.
1. Tower

**TOWER**

Dawn came upon the city without a single ray of light as fanfare. It was a subtle process, the lone figure huddled on a barren veranda noted, that only served to bathe a darkened labyrinth of ruin in varying shades of grey, greyer, and invisibly black. Considering the dismal state that comprised the town this close to the epicentre, however, Valkyrie Tower remained a lovely vantage point.

_Was damn worth it too. Most of ATC's property was vandalized beyond repair, save for this. Don't know why, don't care. What I need here can wait a little longer._

The person crouched behind the precipice gazed analytically at the landmass from which a titanic mushroom cloud emanated, shrouding the skeletons of buildings in grim curtains and highlighting the shallow, grimy water-bed that separated it from the rest of the city. For the last two weeks, it had been a reliable, omnipresent landmark, and a glaring reminder of her eventual task.

_Get to Ground Zero, retrieve anything and anyone that may be of use, tell us what you've found and put an end to the clone soldier situation. You have four weeks to kill anyone we want before we leave you for dead anyway. And for confidentiality's sake we're not telling our grunts that you shouldn't be target practice._

On the positive side, she supposed that the lack of proper sunlight prevented any irritable glare to join in with the smorgasbord of toxins, ash, dust, darkness, wind and constant paranoia that this city possessed. She'd certainly be dead if a little sun got into her eyes, or, god forbid, lit up her dirtied scope!

She knew she had little reason to complain - she had willingly chosen the job, she had days to plan, prepare and infiltrate, and she still had supplies to last another month. A gas mask remained on her face at almost all times, oxygen tanks rigorously rationed for every day. A silenced rifle, compact, sleek and capable of firing any salvaged ammunition, remained on her person - a reliable life-saver. Two polished pistols lay clipped to the sides of her trousers, ammunition stored within a light backpack along with any other scavenged weapons, medical supplies or 'trophies' found on her voyage. A knife was hidden in one of her boots. Her hooded grey jacket ran smoothly over her frame, concealed by an armoured vest and military harness. A crumpled piece of paper lay on top of the pile within her bag, a hastily-drawn map of Fairport on front and a list with almost all the names crossed out on the backside.

Perhaps most importantly, she always kept her personal data assistant in her camo jacket's front pocket. Although she preferred not to talk to anyone unless it was necessary, and in fact the machine was practically useless without proper reception (only available, conveniently enough, at Armacham facilities), it remained her one proper link to the outside world, filtered through the voice of a man she had come to know as "Hoyle".

_Oh, and remember, Miss Dodgson. Your PDA takes pictures - I need solid proof that you've made your targets...disappear._

She grimaced at the memory of his voice. The deal was that she would report back to the Board every three days to give a status report and receive more targets. This meant that she had to keep moving from outpost to outpost, narrowly avoiding patrols of both rogue clones and overpaid murderers, killing people she had never met before, and she'd be forced to listen to his slick voice drawl in pleasure as she stated the facts of the day.

_Politicians..._

As she finished her visual sweep of Auburn, satisfied at the fact that the Replica forces stationed on the outskirts of the blast zone remained stationary, the soft, watery grasp of a breeze pierced her tunic and chilled her bones. She let the feeling pass, trying to focus her mind on the conversation she was about to have. She had learned during her journey that she wasn't the only hunter stalking through the city.

_Well, __**that's**__ the real reason why I'm here, right. Nostalgia's better than another killing spree._

In a quick, silent movement, she disassembled her rifle and strapped it onto her back. She stalked back across the veranda and into the blackened living room, barely straining to avoid tracking her boots or causing the floorboards to creak. Stealth wasn't just her profession, it was routine - but here, in a building that had not seen any fresh life in months, she had the unimaginable luxury to relax. She idly brushed her gloved fingers against the scattered keys of a brutalized piano as she passed by.

The stairwell leading to the upper floor had collapsed, forcing her to attach her grappling hook to the wall and swiftly pull herself up. She paused for another moment, looked down to gaze upon the half-rotted, disfigured corpses that lay in undignified pools of their own blood, and spared no sympathy for them. Whoever had killed the mercenaries had done her a favour.

Walking into the still elaborate bedroom (casually stepping over one last mutilated dead man), she paused to toy with a discarded antique musical box, and was bemused to find that the scratched case could only play one vague note. She dropped it, gazed around at the cracked wallpaper, the festering sheets on a crumbling bed, and the stench of melted wax that came from what could have once been a bathroom, and then strode over to the shelf. She forced it open and found herself looking into a pristine chamber, furnished by shredded papers, a burnt trashcan and a glowing door to the right.

_Seems the shortcuts Hoyle gave me are still valid. Aristide's safe house still has some juice._

She tried to make sense of the papers, although the ink had cracked away and what was left were illegible scribbles, and only found the remains of a map. She sighed, tore the shreds into dust, and continued on into the safe room.

Immediately, the air-conditioning blasted her into submission, a shocking contrast from the dead world outside. Stark white lights hung from above, illuminating a clean room dotted with colourful screens, humming terminals and a control panel right in the centre. The amount of activity, even if it was merely electronic, felt more alive than the actual city.

The main control panel was locked, but that wasn't a problem. She plugged her PDA into the panel, its hacking device absolutely destroyed the terminal security, and there were only nanoseconds of lag between assuming the administrator's identity (Username=Mme_ATC) and the warm, diamond-studded logo of the Company. Instantly, a deep voice cut through the surround speakers, accompanied by a flashing red telephone symbol on the screen.

"You took your damn time, Dodgson."

_That's not my name._

"I've eliminated five more targets this time, Hoyle," She said. "Four Replicas and one-"

"Merc, I'm sure."

"Don't cut me off, Hoyle. I haven't sent you the pictures yet."

"Well," he sighed. "Let's see them."

She bit her lip as she accessed the photo-files, sending over the essential ones within ten seconds. She didn't want to look at the glassy blue eyes of the last 'target's' dismembered head any more than she had to. More importantly, she had to make sure he didn't catch onto the other reasons why she was here...

"Ah...lovely work, my dear." Hoyle paused to chuckle lightly before adding, "You truly are the finest."

_That's right: I'm cheap and I don't ask too much._

"The Replicas have calmed down today," she said. "I've heard several skirmishes at the back of the Tower, several klicks away, but no close encounters yet."

"Have you located the commander?"

"No, Hoyle. I've killed seven 'commanders' in the last three days. They don't seem to have an off-switch bar a bullet lobotomy."

"The rogue commander's still out there, and he has many lieutenants. Surely you have SOME clue where he is?"

_They're not lieutenants, they're slaves. They're all brainless slaves, and it's not just the Replicas._

"Surely," she said, "you've patched into their radios?"

"They have a special decoder ring."

"Good, I know something you don't," she didn't bother suppressing her own smile at that. "I overheard one of their squads a few hours ago. They were talking about an abandoned mall, right on the other side of the city." Pause. "If you get this under control, I suggest making them quieter."

"I don't have time for wisecracks, Janet-"

"Dodgson," she whispered.

"Dodgson, your orders are to-"

_Eliminate everyone on your shit-list, retrieve your expensive toys and then drop it off at the extraction point which you change every day._

"Eliminate everyone on your hit-list, retrieve a prototype device from the facility beneath that mall, and stay alive." He sighed again, as though he was thoroughly exasperated.

_How many facilities do they have?_

"Any new targets, Hoyle?" she asked.

"Please, call me David."

"Anyone else I have to kill?" she repeated.

"Kill? For today?" His tone was light, playful. And mocking. "No, no...we want you to do something else."

"How many targets?"

"Three. I'll send you their profiles right now."

There was a brief pause, and a pleasant musical tone informed her that a file download had been complete. She quickly accessed the three personnel files, scrolling through the photos and brief bios and frowning.

_Trevor Engstrom, Evelyn Tangier and Delilah Carcer. A suit, a scientist and a thug. They all know more classified info than me._

"Do I silence them?" she asked, dreading the answer.

"No...well, you don't really kill them," Hoyle's voice was positively jovial, and he was lucky that she couldn't physically attack him. "We want them alive."

"You want me to capture them?"

"Yes."

"You're actually helping now?"

"We've set up some extraction points at multiple outposts and blockades. The closest one to your position's a train depot a couple of klicks away. We'll airlift them from there. Do whatever you want, as long as they're alive. They'll cover our asses."

_Scapegoats, you son of a bitch._

"What if they're dead?" she asked. "Or with others?"

"Civilians? You know what to do with them. Eliminate them."

"I don't kill innocents."

"Innocent my ass," growled Hoyle, his joyful facade finally forgotten. "You're a killer, Dodgson. Don't ever forget that. I have a meeting to go to, forms to sign, hands to shake. Give me better news next time."

She didn't even bother to reply as the line went dead. She looked to the secured door, straining her ears for a moment to listen for eavesdroppers she knew weren't there. She backed onto a soft chair, and looked at the personnel files once again.

_They'll cover our asses. _ She could imagine Hoyle's pale, stubble-specked face grinning as he said that. _Eliminate them._

"I'm not killing them," she whispered to herself. She looked at Trevor's file, seeing only a smiling professional executive who happened to choose the wrong company. His data file remained vague even to her - clearly, her employers had faith in her to follow orders without understanding them.

She turned back to the console, draining the computer terminals of all the essential data they possessed, and in five minutes she was already climbing down the precariously high walls of the penthouse, vertigo and exposure forgotten as she calculated what to do next.__

_I'll get the goon first. They're the easiest._


	2. A Break

**2. BREAK**

Four hours of travelling passed by without as much as a cockroach scurrying about. She was fine with that. She paused behind a broken air-conditioning unit, keeping an ear tuned for any tell-tale footsteps or ragged breaths in the still air, and silently unslung her bag, taking the map out and tracing her path.

She gazed out above, at the omnipresent cloud of smoke that hung motionlessly above the dead Auburn District and then to the crumbled skyscrapers that hung about the roof she was on like desecrated gravestones. Valkyrie Tower was still visible in the distance, obscured as it was by several other larger buildings, but all things considered she was covering some good mileage.

_Not that I've found anything yet._

The grappling hook had remained a faithful tool, helping her inch her way between buildings, or sneak into broken ledges and windows without falling. She had scoured hotel rooms, offices, lobbies, bathrooms, and practically everywhere for signs of life without spoiling her own existence, and found nary a trace of survivors. She had nothing to help her find the 'targets' bar her own skill and dollops of dumb luck, and that was just the way she liked it.

_I haven't had this silence for a few days. That's good - if there's no people around, there won't be interference at night._

She knew what happened at night, and was still scouring the general area for somewhere she could rely on to sleep safely, but at the very least she was glad for the lack of potential human contact. It gave her a chance to relax, and more importantly it alerted her to the fact that the area was avoided for a reason.

_I need to find a room first before it's dark. I'd sleep in the vents or stalls but I think that's where the prowlers would hide themselves._

As she finished marking her spot on the map with a pen, a far distant drone made itself apparent. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if the patrols had changed schedules, and quietly crawled over to the railing on the roof's edge. Keeping her body low and aware that she was exposed, she worked quickly, assembling her rifle, attaching its tripod to the ground and then gently peering through the slope as its barrel poked through a crack on the edge.

_Thirty seconds max._

Adjusting the distance on her scope, she initially couldn't see the collapsed roads through the fallen, gutted buildings that scoured the ground as far as her eye went. Within seconds, however, she saw movement in the far off corner of her sight and trained her crosshairs on the figures a few dozen blocks away. They weren't Replicas, but they were definitely armed and, if she squinted, clad in dark fatigues.

_Armacham. People who'd kill me if they knew I worked for their boss._

She could see a boxy APC in the center of what passed for a road, facing the direction opposite to her, and that the half-dozen patrolling specks were walking across the street towards a decently intact cafe. As the men quickly crossed the road, oblivious to their distant observer, she casually put a finger against the safety.

She could calculate the distance. At this range and height, and with the near-complete lack of wind movement, she could fire ahead of the leading man and watch his brained body slump to the ground. At this moment, she could decide their fate. Over here, she could end one's life or let them live, and they would never know what had happened or fight back. They would blame one of their own men, perhaps, or even one of the secretive clone snipers that haunted the rooftops elsewhere, but they would never suspect her.

_I can play god._

The moment passed, and she didn't trace the people as they disappeared into the building. Still, she quickly glanced around the windows, searching for sniper nests or posts or other places to avoid, and then pulled her weapon back, putting the tripod back into the bag and folding the rifle. Something shattered behind her, perhaps a bottle, and she hissed under her breath.

_Don't take chances._

She slung out her pistols, scrambling quietly to her feet and tensing her legs, and scanned the roof for movement. There was no sound, not even the wind, that wasn't coming from her heart.

_Something was watching me._

Slowly, she stepped back towards the air-conditioning unit, leaning around the corner with her guns poised. A grey floor, littered with ash and cracks, greeted her. There were scratches and loose fingernails piled at the other edge.

_Get out now._

She ran over to the fire escape, noise forgotten in favor of speed, and knew that she had been marked.

_All right, then. Come out for dinner. I'll be waiting._


	3. Fire!

**3. Fire!**

****She fiddled with her candy wrapper loudly. Her watch claimed that it was 5:21 AM, and her protesting eyes were now faltering from her perch at the topmost corner of an elevator shaft. She'd followed an unseen trail to an ex-library just six hours ago, and had been spending the remaining time scoping out its vantage points and dangers. Using the bathroom and eating an energy bar was permitted, but she hadn't allowed herself to sleep.

Most importantly, the beings that had followed her were growing in number and she had to shake them off. So, for the rest of the night, she had been luring them out of hiding, one by one, and painstakingly eliminating them. Unfortunately for them, she had a lot of ammunition as well as time on her hands. She ran through the statistics briefly

_6/10 cannibals down. 3 decapitations, 2 severed spines, 1 broken neck. 15 shots - last 2 didn't die fast enough. 20 7.62x65mm rounds left. Same amount of darts. Knife's still clean. Silencer needs to be conserved for witness-heavy areas._

_Not a scratch on me. Good start. Will my luck keep up?_

Satisfied, she continued to stare out into the chasm below. Her mask, cumbersome as it was indoors, provided her with reliable thermal-detecting vision, rendering the world around her in a an ocean of blue. As much as it screwed up her accuracy while looking through a scope, at least it was better than staring at blackness.

Something moved far beneath, and she brought her head out from the scope slightly to spot it. The chain-like wires that had once held their elevators continued to sway in the empty pit, interfering with her concentration, and that was not including the fact that all twenty-four shaft' doors were ajar, leaving 24 ways of intrusion open to her.

She heard the rapping of bones against rusted metal before she actually saw it, and was disappointed to only hear three different pairs of claws. Like performers on a stage, one, two then three skeletal figures leaped out from the fourth floor, clanging violently onto a foothold on the concrete ledges and audibly cracking their bones as they readjusted their bodies to the new space.

Their hisses echoed up to her, and even with the thermal goggles she could make out their deathly faces as they gazed directly up at her, trying to sniffle through noses that were nothing but hollow slits. She waved her candy wrapper vigorously, and then dropped it as though she wanted to feed them.

They growled, as though challenged by this, and immediately split off across the shaft. Blindly, they crawled about for ventilation shafts and footholds, their starved, hairless bodies frighteningly taut against their disfigured backs and disjointed limbs, and became static targets for her.

Keeping an eye tilted to the worryingly grated ventilation shaft directly ahead of her, she began eliminating them. The first shot brought light into the blackness, the report thundering downwards and slicing straight down the middle of the furthest one. Shuddering, the brained body collapsed, boneless, down six stories and lay to rest amongst the other already-rotten bodies of its mates.

Steadily, she chambered a second round into her rifle, still aware that her pistols and knife were readily at use, and turned her weapon around a few degrees. With another crack, the ballistic-tipped round exploded outwards and cracked against the gutted stomach of a second creature, blowing it open like a live piñata and raining its innards down onto the corpses below. It staggered, causing her to keep her weapon trained on it even as the one unharmed creature was now twenty feet below her, and only when she chambered the new round in did it cease its spasms and let itself fall. It had undergone a seizure.

The last creature was a little more intelligent than its comrades, perhaps learning from experience. It disappeared into a shaft door, the floor right beneath the Tracker's hiding spot, and for a moment a silence wracked the room. Cursing herself for letting it live, she began to carefully disassemble her rifle, quietly observing the orange-tarred blueness of the shaft, and waited for the steady sound of another one's breathing. The weapon came away in her hands, and she strapped it onto her back. Still nothing. Unslinging a pistol from its holster, she cautiously looked over the ledge - and leaned back out instantly as her heart instinctively flinched. A hand missing its thumb and index finger along with most of its muscles awkwardly swung at her, flopping in the stale air in disturbing anger, and a wheezing cry echoed across the shaft.

_Pitiful._

She shot the outstretched limb in the palm, causing the rest of the creature to flop out screaming in pain, and it scrambled to right itself like a cat. Unfortunately, gravity ensured that its bone structure became a marrow soup as it fell into the carrion graveyard beneath.

_There's one left. And it's waiting for me. I've been waiting too long myself._

Aware that she'd come very close to being knocked off the ledge, she quietly grabbed onto a nearby wire and began to inch her way down the rough surface of the threads. Despite there being plenty of tension, her gloves let through no sensation, and she was able to keep her pistol stretched outwards one-handed while sliding down. Stopping at the bottom shaft, hovering only a few feet above the unrecognizable mess that composed her kills, she swung out and landed on the rotting carpet of the ground floor.

She looked out at the bodies once more, all too aware from their smashed eyes and broken silhouettes that they had once been people, and wondered, not for the first time, what happened to them.

_Does Armacham know of this? Are they responsible? Or is it the paranatural power drowning this city and its people?_

_I'll find out eventually. Real question is, will it matter? No. _

Four pairs of closed elevator doors almost mirrored the shaft that she had just come through, and an amusingly pathetic attempt at a life-like plastic flowerbed lay in the centre of the lobby, complete with melted roses and cracked dandelions. To the right was a pair of double-doors, opening into a stairwell that no doubt led to a certain death by way of obvious ambushes. To the left lay a metal gate. A corner of it looked to be chewed out or picked away at by countless hands, only affirming her suspicion.

Quietly, knowing that there was still at least one more creature to beware of, she slung her backpack and opened it up. Rummaging beneath her supplies, beneath the pills that had kept her aim steady and her eyes reluctantly focused (she'd popped a couple an hour ago when she first crawled into the shaft), she pulled out a long, softly-carven jar the size of her thigh.

She had had this jar for years, and had brought it around for every mission of hers. It wasn't for mere sentimental value either - it was an aid in finding objects imbued with paranormal energy, as well as a great way to weaken and, most importantly, capture them. Normally, she would scoff at such a thing for existing, but there were many abnormal things in this world that she knew about.

She gave it a shake, feeling the weight of countless ash grains grind soundlessly against each other, and smiled. Soon she'd be able to open it up once again and fill it up with more.

_Two more weeks and this jar will be full. Then I can be done with this city._

Holding it to her chest, she stepped towards the direction of the gate and immediately the jar started rattling. Her heart danced, this time in joy, and she restrained herself from immediately opening the jar. She wasn't sure WHAT was behind it, and for all she knew it could've been a live mine or, worse, an unhappy spirit. She'd never been able to capture one of those and didn't intend to start tonight.

_Patience. Patience is a reward unto itself._

She was uncomfortably aware that every passing second spent crunching her feet against the stained carpet, watched by empty pits and countless shadows from the corner of her vision, was a wasted second, and yet she couldn't run. If she did, then the possibility of ignoring that one last creature over to her would become even more likely. She might even lose her balance by running into it, and then it would be all over - she'd come the aftermaths of their rages many times, and last time she had stabbed one to death it had nearly ripped her arm off.

She reached the gate, and peered through it as well as her goggles allowed her to. Squinting through the low-quality lens, she spotted the makings of a typical library room. A dozen shelves lined as far as she could see, wooden tables spread about with chairs helpfully lying around, even a small cafe with a scratchy logo of a coffee bean still visible. A round wooden door, the silhouettes of a half-moon and an owl carved as its windows into the blackness outside, lay at the end of the room. If she ignored the fact that the ground was lousy with shredded papers and mutilated book covers, that the tables were riddled with holes and on their sides, and that a stack of bodies, rotten, eaten and visibly anguished, lay as though they were part of a morbid sandwich...well, if she did, she'd have found nothing wrong with entering.

As it was, she hesitated for a moment before slipping through the gap gun-first, aware that she was the only living thing in the room. She felt shaken to see the corpses - not necessarily that they were all dead civilians, but because of the way they had been...ordered into place. As though there was some crude intelligence behind them being stacked together and eaten piece by piece, as though the things that lay dismembered in the shaft had done all of this.

_Maybe back when their brains weren't hollow...forget it. They're food for creatures that no longer need it. Don't worry about it._

The jar increased its vibrating, pulling in a direction over to one of the shelves, and she heeded its call. Navigating the maze of overturned tables, ignorantly unread books and fallen shelves was as complicated as she expected, requiring several detours and an occasional climb atop a shelf and leaping onto another one. Along the way, she had nearly stepped on the missing creature, which had been SLEEPING while clutching onto a sparkling necklace. A bullet to the cranium had taken care of that.

Finally, at the bottom right corner of the seventh shelf, just when she thought there was no sign of it, the jar stopped vibrating. Immediately, she feared that the trail had been lost - but instead, merely realized that it was hidden behind a carefully placed book. Pulling that out, she stared at the object and grinned at the simplicity of the idea.

To anyone, this anomaly looked just like an ordinary book. It even had the same black cover, badly-taped spine and crinkly pages as the disused books that lay beside it. If she were not wearing her gasmask, she could've even smelled the dry ink on old, tea-stained paper amidst the rot of skeletons stacked as food.

But she couldn't just grab it. Instead, she opened up her jar very carefully, and poured a handful of ash onto her gloved palm. Very careful to not spill any, she smeared it over the book and it let out a scream.

That shook her. She'd never had an anomaly scream before, and in the silence of a library it was horribly unexpected. She hadn't misheard it either - it distinctly resembled a girl crying out in pain.

Curiously, she grabbed the book and looked at its cover. One look was enough for her to drop it, realizing what a serious mistake she'd just made.

"My hApPY plACE aNd ME" said the cover in disjointed, spidery black writing. A crude drawing of a gnarled tree, a girl swinging from its branch in the light of some impossibly detailed sunlight, lay within. The girl was pointing straight at her, and it was moving in the picture.

_This belongs to someone. Someone not alive. But the picture is coming alive._

The orange glow on the cover seemed to bleed out, spreading past the corners of the book like an un-clotting stream of blood and turning the ground around her feet the same unwholesome hue. The air around her began to feel thick and sweltering, and she realized what was happening. Closing her jar, she tucked it into her bag and began to jog away from the spreading orange, watching as it rapidly began to glow. First dimly, like a flame, then rising to a hotter shade as though the heat were being turned up within an overgrown furnace.

_A fire in a flammable place. I need to get out of here._

As though on cue, the haunted, screaming book burst into flames and set off a chain reaction across the shelf. As though racing her, the flames tore across the shelf, burning books and turning everywhere it spread into a smoke-choked disaster, and she could already hear crackling and collapsing as the wooden shelf itself finally collapsed.

She rounded the corner, and stopped. There was something staring at her through the gate, a figure that was a pure white against the orange that was beginning to erupt around her. A figure the size of a small child, a figure wearing a girl's dress, a figure that with a single gesture caused all the furniture in the room to erupt into flames and render the Tracker's goggles useless.

Her eyes ached, even though she had already turned off the thermal vision to prevent the shock of all the light from blinding her, and she couldn't help but make a connection between that girl and the book. Or, more importantly, the girl and whatever had turned those people into man-eating things.

She wove her way through the burning maze, barely avoiding a falling shelf and leaping over tables and pyres of unread encyclopaedias, and was dismayed to find that the door itself appeared to be locked with a pair of thick chains.

_I have no time for this._

Her clothes and backpack could withstand fire for a minute tops, which was the only reason why what she was about to do was possible. Unclipping the one grenade that she had from her belt and priming it, she lobbed it to the door and immediately doubled back to the minimum safe distance.

The door couldn't fly apart fast enough.

She tore into the darkness beyond with the ferocity of the cannibals, leaving the library to burn itself into a crisp. When she stopped running, leaning against a dead car on a nearby street and glaring at the still-blazing building, she thought of the girl.

_A ghost. An angry one. Wonder if she has more important things to worry about than me._

A girl's name, half-gone, wafted through her mind, summoned up by the unwelcome voice of Hoyle. _Alma_. Was that…Alma?

Who the hell was she?


	4. Deviant Replicas

All around her, blackened vehicles were scattered in disarray. Several buses had tipped over, causing fatal pile-ups which seemed to form chains farther than the eye could see. At the intersection up ahead, pools of glass marked where cars had been thrown like a spoiled child's toy, or had crushed each other upon impact. Several others still had their doors opened and a body, bound by a seat belt, flopping out. And that was ignoring the other dessicated, charred bodies that marked this massacre, far more numerous than the countless vehicles - although gender was no longer necessary to tell, there were plenty of children who'd died here.

_Ridiculous. I was hoping the streets would be less infested. Instead I've moved up to a car graveyard._

It was dusk now. In a few minutes, the feeble gray light that swam through the swirling aggregation of above would dissipate, replaced by a blackness unparalleled by few natural locations. That immovable tower of smoke, the mushroom cloud, now appeared to be angrily churning - from what, she'd love to find out.

She'd have to work fast to find shelter first. Her head ached for rest, but she shook it off and worked on crawling underneath the procession of wrecked cars lying across the freeway.

In Fairport, being outside at night was a death sentence.

_Need to find an intact tanker. Something I can shut myself in. Finding new shelter will have to do at daybreak._

She couldn't spare pity to the gasping cries that were coming thirty feet below her. If she looked out, her head would be ripe for getting blown open by a rabid sniper. That'd be a fitting irony. As she sluggishly made her way beneath the remains of a smashed, burnt-out car, her bag pressing down on her back with painful regularity, she heard the voice speak. It was a woman's.

"...hel...hel.."

She couldn't help the woman, and she was fine with that. Judging from the sheer effort that the garbled voice was taking into breathing, it wouldn't be long before she was food. Nonetheless, it was a survivor and she'd still need to observe them if she didn't want Hoyle to get pissed.

There was a gap in the burnt asphalt, wide enough to drop a pebble through, and the Tracker made an effort to crawl towards it. All the while, she looked around at the devastation that had been wrecked throughout the freeway, and idly reconstructed the confusion ensuing during those early days.

_Seems like there was a traffic jam stretching from the industrial district all the way to downtown._ _When the explosion hit, everyone tried to get out immediately. None of them escaped the shock-wave._

_None of them._

She reached the gap, positioning herself behind a conveniently placed wheel, and took out her binoculars There was no need to shoot this dying woman - indeed, it would be antithetical to her survival if she did so. Nonetheless, she turned on her PDA, wondering if there was someone on her list she could identify.

_Don't have many female victims anyway._

Adjusting her binoculars to amplify what little light lay beneath the highway, the Tracker found the woman. She zoomed in.

_Someone's had 'fun' with her._

Her face, or more accurately 'scarred mass of bruises', was mutilated beyond any reasonable surgical repair. One blue eye hung out from its socket, the torn optical nerve dangling from her torn socket, while the other was hidden beneath a swollen, blood-crusted cheek. Her mouth hung open, revealing freely bleeding gums almost empty of teeth and a thin tongue that appeared to have been thoroughly sliced apart. Straggly blonde hair futilely covered her face, most of it appearing to have been wrenched out.

She lay in an slowly growing lake of blood, firmly anchored by a three-inch steel spike that pinned her midsection to the ground. Her arms and ankles were similarly penetrated with these over-sized needles, removing any chance this barely living woman had of struggling free. Even as the Tracker watched, a rattling croak came from the woman as she gurgled out blood - blood that fountained out from the spike that tore straight through her thin, gouged breasts.

The Tracker scrolled through the name list and opened up Delilah Carcer's profile. She snickered at the pleasant, if slightly haughty, blonde security guard smiling up from the computer, and wondered if she could pass the dying wretch as her. It wasn't as if anyone else could verify it.

She read through Carcer's file briefly once more.

_D. Carcer  
>Age: 32<br>Hair: Blonde  
>Eye color: Blue<br>Family/co-dependents: [Redacted]  
>Security Clearance: Orange<br>Profession: Deputy chief of local security_

_Read: blackmail, torture, maimings, abductions and 'disappearances'. She's no saint._

Satisfied, she flipped back to the PDA's camera function and quickly snapped a photograph of the corpse. Saving it in the album she designated "Dead People Someone Told Me To Find", she quickly holstered the portable computer and was just about to turn away when the woman let out a surprisingly lively shriek.

A dark shape was at her leg, tearing away at an open sore and ripping out a morsel of sinew from the thigh. It was the first of many, many dark shapes which now seemed to materialize from everywhere below. From the gutters emerged a six-legged thing that loped forwards like a gorilla. From several cracks in the street emerged a pack of those blind, naked human crawlers who now hissed furiously at their competitors. Yet another unidentified species of mutant emerged from the walls, adding to the hungry swarm descending upon the easy prey. They descended upon her, seeming to take a perversely long time in cutting apart the screaming woman and devouring her insides. What little she could see of the woman past the thrashing masses were crimson bones. Even if she had wanted to, it would be stupid now to put the woman out of the misery of getting eaten alive

The Tracker had no more business here. She edged herself away, looking around to ensure that there was no silent creature coming up behind her, when the woman directed her last words up to the highway.

"Help! PLEASE! OH GOD!"

After that, there was only the sound of flesh and bone being rent apart by hungry mouths and vicious growls as the cannibals fought over wet meat. A few seconds passed by before the report of a sniper rifle cracked out from the third floor of an adjacent building.

A creature screamed in shock. The others scurried away, hissing as several other shots tore through the street in search of more victims. Odd. The weapons seemed to be of the Replica variety.

_Replicas using bait? Or are they just lucky psychopaths?_

In any case, she needed to leave. Now. She got to her feet, concealing herself behind an overturned car, and spotted a tanker on the other side of the freeway. Hoping the smorgasbord below would buy her time, she darted towards it and dove into the vehicle's back, knocking the air out of her lungs. Her heart racing, she took out her knife as she waited for a rifle report to follow her. Nothing happened. That was little comfort. She searched the tanker's back, finding it bereft of blood. Nonetheless, the back door was wide open. And there were creatures outside.

She sighed, digging out the dreaded pills from her bag and removing her mask briefly to swallow them. Her drained body felt a boost that she knew was not going to last the night.

_I can't sleep now. So when can I rest? I'll go mad otherwise._

For six minutes and twenty-five seconds, the Tracker lay motionless beneath a bench within the back of a gutted tanker. Weary as they were, her arms continued to steadily aim her two pistols at the back door, ready for any unwanted creature. Her heart hammered in her ears, though only from the stimulants she had taken. She strained her ears - the psychotic snipers had ceased their firing a minute ago, and the abnormal creatures had dispersed. Thankfully, none of them seemed to be making their way up this highway.

_Hopefully the snipers got bored of shooting helpless monsters. Maybe they can stop wasting my time now._

She slowly crawled out from under the metal bench, making no sudden movements as she did a careful sweep of her position. Nothing had sneaked up on her - although she'd certainly know if they had. Cautiously, with muddy boots stalking across hollow metal, she edged her way through the tanker. By a happy accident, a nearby bus had collapsed in a way that conspicuously blocked her from the limited viewing cone of the psychotic snipers.

_There can be snipers anywhere. At night, the civilians and Armacham thugs stay put and pray to see the sun just one more time. But the Replicas don't acknowledge the night. They're patrolling right now._

_I hate them._

She frowned at the thought. Bringing hatred, or indeed any personal emotion into her work, just ruined her focus. Besides, they were just soldiers - 'heartless killers with no conception of remorse or doubt', apparently. Best to save hatred for their controllers, right? Bullshit. Despite everything she'd fought against, the unrelenting determination of these cloned soldiers still garnered potent feelings from her.

_Calm down, look outside. The cloud's to your left, head that way. _

It was almost completely black now. When night fell in this city, it certainly did not pull any punches. The darkness did not make things any easier for her - she'd learned that Replicas had rather impressive eyesight even without their night-vision gear, and the paranormal beings were nocturnal predators. They could very easily smell her sweat, the invisible traces of dried blood on her clothes, perhaps even the candies she had devoured- proper hygiene was practically impossible in a situation such as this, so she hadn't even bothered. Two more weeks to go, and by the end she'd look like she'd been in the hell-hole forever.

The mind tended to wander when given little external stimulus, and so the Tracker was eager to carefully chance a violent death and peek out the side of the tanker. With her visor's light-amplification activated, she could pick out a beautifully wide range of dark, very dark and even darker shapes looming out before her. The high-way sloped downwards several hundred meters ahead of her, and she immediately crawled out and started heading that way, anxious to leave. There was no moon in sight, but the mushroom cloud was still unmistakably there - now seeming to churn in anger. How considerate of it to remain a grimly useful landmark.

It was when she was a hundred meters from the exit that she heard footsteps. They weren't hers, she was always careful to ensure her soles never made noise that offended her ears; but they were definitely military issue. There were several pairs of feet, though the exact amount was hard to determine, and they were right beneath her. She bristled - Replicas were nearby.  
><em><br>Hey, this will only be the fortieth time I've tried to kill the commander._

She quickly consulted her PDA, scrolling through her list and found the Replica section. As her employer carefully pointed out, the Replicas, despite being under the command of a single psychic, still had a rudimentary hierarchy where grunts followed the orders of an elite task-force of lieutenants who in turn answered directly to the commander. Since the psychic commander had died, the Lieutenants/Elites were left in charge of the remaining forces. Apparently, breaking their link to the new commanders was key to stopping their rampage - but, as inefficient as it was, ATC believed the best way to accomplish this was to simply kill all the lieutenants.

And there were a lot of them. Thousands upon thousands of rogue clones in the city, and quite a number of elites still left alive. Slowly but surely, she and the other troops were denting a number in the command structure - but she suspected killing the elites wouldn't make a difference. The Replicas were self-sufficient enough to fight a street war of attrition with remarkably few casualties on their side, and she had come to doubt they even relied on a psychic's command by this point.

_Maybe it's "Alma"._

She scrolled through file upon file of clone, seeing identical faces clad in identical face-masks only distinguished by a letter, a serial number, and a call-sign that ranged from standard to unconventional. Deviant, D-1235. Papa, P-1030. Mike, M-9001. Dozens upon dozens of clones were left unaccounted for, and it was time to mark one more off her list.

There was one trick she'd learned to stalk these Replicas, though it required much trial and error. She could only patch into the radio frequency of a Replica squad leader's communication channel when in their general area, which happened to be half a mile. This only provided limited help, as the Replicas seemed to have become quieter over the last two months. And more disturbing.

The footsteps were moving to her left, indicating that the soldiers were making their way down a secluded alley watched over by rotting fire-escapes and collapsed drain pipes. Crouching down to the railing, she simultaneously took out her silenced sniper rifle with its last remaining clip and tried to patch into the radio frequencies listed on the PDA. Carefully looking around herself to ensure she was not totally exposed, she calculated that the soldiers would move into position within ten seconds.

It was when her scope, cautiously adjusted to ensure she could see the entire alley and the enormous warehouse complex that lay before it, acknowledged a trio of eerily calm heavily-armed interlopers methodically moving from car to car on the street below, that her radio softly crackled with white noise. Deep within her backpack, her jar began rattling in the alley's direction. She could hear shallow, harsh breaths echoing within her ears, and was almost impressed by how the soldiers conducted themselves wordlessly. Until one of them spoke, in their characteristically flat, unenthusiastic manner.

"Watch our backs. Snipers can be anywhere," said who she presumed to be the squad's commander. Two other Replicas now moved into view, though it was practically impossible to tell which one was more important. At least the elites were smart enough not to draw attention to themselves.

It was still very dark, but she could identify the weapons they were carrying. The Replica at the head of the group carried a PK470 rifle, prepared for mid-range encounters; his two identical twins carried RPL sub-machine guns; a Replica sensibly stationed atop a manhole at the back and scanning the sky for sudden movements was armed with a very deadly portable particle-beam rifle; and there was one more Replica wielding a grenade launcher near the sniper, ensuring their firepower could overwhelm anyone attacking them from the ground.

_I know who to get first._

It was when the three Replicas were halfway up the alley, ready to signal an all-clear to the others, that she fired on the woefully ignorant sniper. His visor caved in with a spongy crack accompanied by a bright flash, and only his lower jaw and tongue were left as his decapitated body crumpled down. The Replicas reacted as immediately as she did, and she only managed to fire one more crippling shot at one of the rifle-toting clones as they scrambled to hide behind dumpsters.

"Sniping son-of-a-bitch," growled the commander in a matter-of-fact manner. "Rip him apart." The Tracker grimaced, more angered that she hadn't identified him on the first shot than scared, and immediately backed away as the Replicas showered her general area with shrapnel and vicious gunfire. Cement cracked and metal groaned under the weight of their bullets, and she knew a grenade would be launched up as well. She had lost the element of surprise, and now she'd have to move fast before they hunted her down...

On her belly, she frantically crawled to the side. Something heavy whooshed behind her, and she braced for impact. The resulting shrapnel and blast-wave was absorbed by the husk of a burnt-out tanker, and gratefully enough she felt only a momentary wave of heat pass over her. What was more disconcerting was the moaning of the wreckage, as the blast had ripped out a sizable gap in the highway. The highway was on the verge of collapsing.

"Not good enough," the Elite said, his tone losing its electronic edge. "I don't see his blood. I want to hear him scream." The Tracker grit her teeth. She hated this commander as much as he seemed to hate her. While they were distracted, she leaned over the edge again and beheaded the grenade-launching Replica. The bastard had nearly scored a fatal shot...

"Coward," spat the commander. "Talk to me. I know you're there!" The Tracker gave him a silence punctuated by the howling wind that had suddenly overtaken the air. The breeze was almost soothing to her skin, but she couldn't afford to relax. Two more, down in the alley. A 1/2 chance in getting these bastards out of her way.

_15 bullets left. These guys have no chance._

She slowly side-tracked back to the blackened gap once more, keeping her weapon trained on the alley and ears ready for movement. The area was motionless, the dead bodies near the sidewalk left for more carrion-eaters to follow, but she knew the Replicas weren't ones to let a grudge go. Not these ones.

A rifle poked around from the alley and fired a burst that practically deafened her. Unfazed, she shot through the brick corner and heard the wet gurgling sounds of a man unable to stop his lung from bleeding out. She fired again, to make sure he was silent. Unfortunately, this feint bought the last soldier enough time to speed out of the alley, too fast for her to focus on, and fire his SMG on her position. She ducked, the whoosh of bullets barely missing her flak jacket, and counted how many bullets he was wasting. 30 so far.

_20 more to go, for an RPL_. _Let this guy talk himself to death._

"You monster. She felt that, you know," the commander growled. "I'm gonna make you feel everything you did to my men! You're not getting past me!" He fired again, emotion clouding his mind too much to realize that his bullets couldn't penetrate concrete. His weapon clicked in the cold, restless air, and he scrambled to reload.

"Die, motherfuc-" his head was blown open by the Tracker's 12th remaining bullet, and the mutilated body stumbled in seeming confusion before collapsing in a heap. After taking a photograph of him, The Tracker scrolled through her PDA, then carefully looked through her binoculars to verify his identity: Deviant-1235, apparently.

_At least I didn't waste my bullets_ _like I did with the cannibals..._

The warehouse complex the doomed soldiers were walking to had been highlighted on her map - storehouses for Falconer's Meat Paradise and Vanhorn Mannequin World. There were two reasons why she cared: First off, cutting through them was the closest way to the next safe house, and secondly, the jar hidden in her backpack was vibrating in its general direction. She'd come to trust the haunted ashes stored within that jar to lead her to some treasure.

_Need to start taking more caution. A ghost attacked last time. Is she catching on?_

She'd have to take shelter in there, as the racket had surely alerted other squads. Quickly rappelling down from the highway, she cautiously looted the corpses and made her way unmolested down the alley. Her muscles, weary as they were, continued to work - but it was just 7:16. She had a long night to get through.


	5. Mannequin World

**The Tracker**

After a moment of trepidation about only having taken a couple of explosives and a particle rifle from the Replicas, she had climbed over the flimsy fence surrounding the over-large warehouse complex and ran all the way to the nearest building. In the darkness, Vanhorn Mannequin World loomed over her like a disapproving parent and her ash jar shuddered in excitement. She had even pressed her ears against the ravaged masonry of the colossal metal husk and heard an incessant rumbling pulsing through the walls.

All the entrances and windows had been methodically boarded up or covered with collapsed crates and girders, and she had momentarily feared that there were people who had sealed themselves inside. It didn't take long for her to scrounge for a crowbar and pry away at the sorry excuse of a locked back door. To her satisfaction, her strength did not fail her and the metal door teetered hesitantly on its rusted edges before creaking open. After a cursory check for any stalking Replicas, she then stepped into the surprisingly uncluttered but incredibly narrow corridor, and shut the door as best as she could. It couldn't lock itself anyway.

_So - no one wanted to come in here. Then something good must be hiding in this place._

It was as blacker than pitch inside, and dust billowed up into her goggles with every step she took. She continued to stop ever so often, straining her ears to pick through the silence and pick out any warning signs of life, and found that she could not hear any breathing aside from her own discreet exhalations. Metal screeched, plastic creaked, and that curious rumbling refused to stop. She turned on the flashlight clipped to her head, confident that it would not give her away, and then readied her pistols as she pulled the door open.

A discolored humanoid figure stood before her, faceless, nude and possessing rounded joints. She rolled her eyes and rapidly scanned the colossal room she had let herself into. Her assessment was incorrect, judging from the blood that tainted the old corroded walls - there _were_ people who were trapped inside. They simply weren't alive _now_.

_I don't want to see them, but I'll have to._

Life-size dolls clustered all over the room, posed in oddly naturalistic ways. There were two unclothed mannequins crouched over a third one in a torn dress. Others sat on chairs and crates, supporting their own weight and motionlessly gesturing at the ceiling. Rows upon rows of enormous shelves, three layers high, filled the room past where her light shone, revealing bodies that hung out and stared at her with glassy dead eyes. A pack of male dolls, their plastic grins and hair glistening with grease, stood in militaristic fashion to her right side. A few scattered ghostly white limbs decorated the floor, clearly not human yet bathed in fresh blood. Her light was barely strong enough to hit the ceiling, bathing several disfigured bodies motionlessly hanging by the neck. It didn't look like they were being suspended by rope.

Her jar was squirming to get free, and the Tracker forced it out of her bag. She swallowed nervously as she took off her mask and balaclava. The far too familiar stench of dead air filled her nostrils. She hadn't done this in a long time, and it was going to hurt.

She took a handful of trembling ashes and threw them over her face. Her eyes stung agonizingly as though they were burning up, and her mouth fought vainly to force the suffocating sensation of ash out of her throat. She covered her mouth and closed her teary eyes, furiously fighting the urge to reject the ashes, and she silently struggled to stay on her feet. The pain grew, apparently eating away at her guts and boiling her blood, and still she held on. She was too vulnerable.

_Word of advice: don't take medication with ashes._ _Or do it when you're not exposed._

Her endurance paid off. The pain was gone, and with it, the silence. She snapped her eyes open and saw familiarity.

The dead writhed around her, inside her, above and below. Their translucent bodies flickered in and out, color and texture drained from them long ago. They shuffled blindly, desperately holding vibrating faces that howled and wailed in cacophonic despair. Their faces locked onto hers, unseeing yet pleading, murmuring incoherent pleas. None of them looked ready for a conversation, and she wasn't up for saving them - if she knew how to do it she'd have done it a long time ago.

_A lot of dead linger around here. No one's free from this city. Should I blame "Alma" for that too?_

Putting her mask back on and securing the jar once more, she shoved and knocked her way through the incorporeal beings, noticing how they crumbled and billowed away. Their entire existence had just been completely obliterated by her carelessness. She wasn't sure whether that was good or bad, but either way she opted to avoid plowing through the spirits. They might have welcomed it, but total annihilation was undeniably far worse than the most wretched undeath.

_All right, now where is this relic? Concentrate._

She had found, long ago, that the energy stored within the powder could be ingested. The benefits of doing this were questionable, but she found it could be useful if she wanted to find other psychics. Whether it awakened a sixth sense or merely enhanced the five mundane senses, she had never quite found out, but in any case she could feel herself being drawn to the center of the vast room. The rumbling that had been coursing through the walls now enveloped her, confirming without question that she wasn't going to be let down by whatever was causing the disruptions. Looking at the shelves, she saw a thick, glistening trail of incorporeal blood and traced it into the shadows. She needed to follow that.

She silently stalked through the room, using her grappling hook to scale the steep shelves. A vantage point always had its practical uses, particularly when most of the floorspace taken up within the shadowy room was either cluttered with plastic bodies, worryingly smashed crates, dismantled forklifts and collapsed lights. If this was the nest of some horrific predator, it certainly didn't belong to those unclothed cannibals - **they** were insistent on marking their territories with shit-covered profanities and useless jewelry. She continued to noiselessly crawl over rusted metal, taking care not to watch what the dead were doing. She wasn't curious about the afterlife - after all, she'd known all about it forever. Ghosts were troublesome and static, little more than mere fragments and half-remembered images of the human beings they once were.

The shelf ended suddenly, and with a running start, she bounded off and just barely managed to latch her hands onto the ledge ten feet ahead of her. Her legs smashed into the cold steel with a soft thud and the weight of her gear sliced into her back. She sighed and quickly pulled herself up. She looked around, seeing an oddly detailed female mannequin on the shelf to her right, and cocked her head curiously. The artificial woman's hair billowed softly, as though it were caught in a breeze, and her skin lacked the same glistening texture that the others possessed. This was odd, but at least it wasn't another one of those dehumanized lunatics.

She swept her gaze across the room again, noting that a pungent stench of rot wafted through her mask, and found herself glaring an inch away from the mannequin's hollow eyes. She knocked it over, and glowered madly as she looked around for the perpetrator of this prank. The ghosts clearly didn't have enough energy to harm her, let alone physically move an object, and she'd have certainly seen a poltergeist by now.

_Blame Alma. Again._

The rumbling within her head grew irritatingly stronger as the trail grew ever stronger, and as she reached the end of the shelf she saw why. The blood trail ended near a mass of shipping containers, and a nest had been created there. A spiky reptilian creature, as large as a bear yet built like a gorilla, lay hunched over countless glistening sickly green eggs. Desiccated limbs and half-chewed intestines wreathed the crimson nest, while an unrecognizably mutilated corpse was currently being noisily mauled and swallowed by the crowned creature. Voices and faces stared up at her, their grief infectious. All this she saw instantaneously. In the next instant, just as she had taken out the particle rifle and aimed at it, the monster snapped its horned head upwards and bore its beady scarlet eyes into hers. Letting out a shriek of rage that echoed through the air, it rose on its hackles and dug its scythe-like hands into the shelf, shaking it so hard that the Tracker was suddenly launched in the air.

Disoriented, she struggled to right herself and barely managed to land feet-first on the ground, clutching onto the energy weapon. She turned to the creature's general direction, the paranormal energy having smothered any electrical light sources, and heard its titanic bulk bounding her way. She couldn't see through the ghost-filled blackness, but it was fast, it was huge, and it let out a roar far worse than a derailing train.

She barely managed to duck into a shelf behind her before the gargantuan being smashed its maw into it. Metal screamed and cracked as the monster agonizingly tore away at the shelf and swiped away at her, and still she continued to be blind and helpless. She nursed the heavy, warm weapon beside her waist, as confined as she was inside the shelf, and as the creature's hot rancid breath enveloped her she pulled the trigger.

She had closed her eyes, but even so the afterimage of the harsh burning blue beam that flew out from the weapon and thrown her painfully against the wall stuck for a while. The monster had retreated, however, moaning deliriously somewhere to the side, and she decided that she could move further away. The particle weapon still had 2 more shots left for her to kill it with, if she didn't want to waste her pistols and rifle.

As soon as she had stepped out, the monster immediately let out a shriek of anger and pounded its way towards her, smashing apart mannequins and knocking crates out of the way. Suddenly, it stopped and when she heard an ominous groaning she immediately ran backwards. There was a horrible chorus of smashes and chirps as shelves crumbled and fell onto each other. The din was deafeningly bad, far more irritating than the ghosts' – and deadly too, as a rain of fallen body parts and crates began assailing the slippery floor.

Narrowly dodging a writhing body, she heard the creature tearing down on her and grinned at its eagerness. Bracing her feet properly this time, she fired down its way – the brilliant hot-blue flash momentarily revealed the creature, bending its blackened but intact horns towards her like a living battering ram. The burning beam ricocheted off harmlessly, which annoyed her – the pseudo-minotaur seemed to be armored everywhere except…

She fired one last shot at its muscular, human-like legs, and a high-pitched scream rewarded her. For all of two seconds, she thought she had found its weakness. Then it suddenly flung itself over her head and landed dangerously next to her. Its hot breath fell on her again, and bloody saliva dribbled onto her head. She barely ducked out of its grasp, but inwardly cursed herself – the creature had outran her and there was no place for her to take cover in time. But she could still hurt it.

She took out her pistol and guessed where its limbs were. She fired once. Black blood flew across the air as hot metal pierced the scaly aberration's right elbow. The creature recoiled, covering its face as though in pain, and she grinned. Firing once again, she took out her other pistol and stepped back, confident that nothing alive could disturb her from her kill. The creature's spikes failed to protect its joints, which emboldened her to try to shoot its eyes. However, her foot hit the soft, badly chewed remains of the people the man-eater had been murdering, and too late she found herself crushing the creature's unborn offspring.

_So much for spatial awareness._

It ignored the pain now. It let out a howl of pure fury that left her reeling, and charged with an unstoppable bloodlust. Shooting at it wouldn't hurt it, and the best she could do was dive into the narrow gap between the two nearest shipping containers. The creature knocked its head into both containers, only managing to dent them very badly, and gnashed its teeth manically at the woman pinned against the wall. Looking to her side, she found a ladder and hurriedly climbed up to the catwalk above. The monster noticed, and had opted to climb onto the container with inhuman speed and rip away at the railing. She ran, practically deafened by the unceasing thuds and screaming from a hundred angry souls, and tried to fire at the creature's head. She was getting desperate, she knew, and wasted ammo – hell, she found herself reloading both pistols with her last clip by the time she had reached a doorway. In the darkness, she stumbled down a flight of steps just as the monster closely in pursuit burst through the doorway. As she moved to open the door at the bottom of the stairs while throwing a mine over her shoulder, she swore the thing was laughing.

She pushed the door open and was relieved to be practically blinded by the fiery light. She had found the warehouse complex's garage, although most of its vehicles were long gone. Instead the room was saturated in sprawling messages etched into the walls and ceilings, images that spanned the walls and invariably depicted violence. Female mannequins stood guard at the corners of the room and at the centre, uniformly clad in long black wigs and red dresses. She could not see any spectres roaming here, but nonetheless a maddened whisper began to reverberate within her mind. All of this was bathed in an eerily unwavering crimson light, and the unexplained rumbling now pounded incessantly into her frantic heart.

_Think about this __**later.**_

The creature was right behind her, and she ran behind the nearest truck just as the creature ripped apart the door and activated the trap. The proximity mine exploded right where its eyes should have been, and the blinded creature was momentarily stunned. Half of its sharp, crocodilian forehead had melted away, and the crimson innards of its eyes streamed out from where shrapnel had blown them away. Just as the Tracker was about to fire her rifle at the creature's eyes a second time to end its existence, it suddenly flipped itself over. To her disappointment, its belly was armored too. To make matters worse, the creature now began rolling its bulk towards her, its tail swishing madly as it let out a disturbingly choked laugh.

She barely managed to flank the thing, which only encouraged it to grudgingly get to its feet and steady itself. She had prepared for this. The creature made another impossible leap, soaring over her head and smashing itself into a concrete column. With a horrible crack, the creature had lodged several pieces of rubble into its face and now lay defenseless at her feet. The Tracker hesitantly walked up from the mortally wounded creature, wondering if she needed to feed it an incendiary grenade to ensure it couldn't hurt her, when she saw blood trailing from a gap between its ceratopsian frill and impenetrable back.

_So I can severe its spine, eh?_

She knew she had fired at it more than necessary because her guns ran empty, but she strongly wanted to ensure this persistent thing could die. She even took out her knife, and painstakingly carved out its crocodilian neck. For a reason she could not explain, she dug all the way until she could feel the knobs of its spinal cord, and wrenched out a piece of the creature's bone from its black flesh. She felt very hungry, and she cut out a piece of its meat for later. She'd eaten worse before.

Sighing, she turned to face the source of the rumbling. She wasn't too surprised. The mannequin ladies were gathered around one "special" woman in particular, their heads bowed as though in worship. The Relic itself appeared to be a collection of mannequin and human body parts haphazardly bound together and suspended from the ceiling, hovering above an enormous A that must have required several buckets of paint. The mannequin's black hair was well-combed and clean, covering a hooded face, and her body wore a brilliantly crimson evening gown that emitted that insane glow. The Tracker splashed another handful of ashes just to verify its authenticity. The mannequin undeniably squirmed around her bonds and swung manically in the Tracker's general direction. Muffled pleas issued from her.

_Quite eager, aren't we._

She primed her incendiary grenade and then threw it at the Relic, ducking behind a column just as it detonated. There was a blinding pain and out came a voice.

"I love you," a man said. "I'll do anything for you. Even if it kills me."

The Tracker peered out to see a translucent figure dissipate into ashes. She hadn't expected that.


	6. Marauders

"P-please!" cried the boy, obediently cowering on what was left of his knees. "You don't, you don't have to do this, you d-don't have to k-kill me! Don't kill me! Please don't! Don't hurt me, you fucking asshole! I'll do anything, anything, just don't hurt me! Fucking get away from me! STOP IT!" His big bruised eyes blindly peered out at her impenetrable mask from behind trembling fingers. He'd seen what had happened to all of his friends.

She stalked over behind him, certain that the fear of her gun would keep him from struggling. The young man was openly crying now - huge racking sobs that would scare a baby, if there were any left around to hear him. He really was making too much noise. "Please, it was their fault, it was HERS, I DIDN'T MEAN TO DO ANYTHING!" She wrapped her rigid arms around his throat in a guillotining choke, jerking his terrified face up. He opened his mouth, noiselessly forming a frail plea, and phlegm dribbled over his cracked lips.

"You'll live," she whispered. Her voice was muffled and dry from having been unused for so long, but the young man understood all too well. "For a few minutes."

Then she started strangling him.

***

She had been confused about that Relic, but only for a moment. She hastily scooped up the ashes into her jar, inwardly assaulting herself for being so lenient with that library from last night - it had probably been one of that lovely Alma's booby traps - and hiding behind a truck as paranoia suddenly settled in. Several burning truths wafted through her tumultuous thoughts, filling her muscles with unwanted laxity. Even though her flashlight had been reactivated by the Relic's capture, she left the light off and tried to focus in the darkness.

_1. I haven't slept in three days.  
>2. I haven't slept because I've been eating things that I'd be called mad if I tried to describe them, and taking pills because Hoyle told me to.<br>3. I just wasted all my ammo on a fucking dinosaur. This building won't be abandoned much longer._

_You reckless imbecile._

Her eyes seemed to be glued together, but instead of wasting even more of those woefully limited addictive pellets, she pulled that deathly putrid, limp, drenched lump of monster meat she had passionately stolen, and momentarily removed her mask to take a bite. The meal was beyond dreadful, but experience had taught her to swallow it down. In any case, she was very awake. Her skin tingled, her heart hammered, and she HAD to start moving or else she would just drop dead.

So she quietly crept out of the parking lot (pausing to take a photograph of the Mauler before realizing, not with a little bitterness, that an amateur with a $200 allowance could have made a more convincing being) and moved into the corridor leading to Falconer's Meat Paradise. Perhaps not too surprisingly, there were mutilated dolls and maddening graffiti defiling the decidedly un-pristine walls of the room. Haphazardly scattered at the door lay suspiciously putrid lumps of scavenger-free flesh, along with a multitude of crudely drawn phalluses scribbled with what appeared to be pus and urine. Spontaneously, the Tracker began taking photographic record of the threats. Maybe there was a coherent message here.

**YOU LEFT US TO DIE! Cowards. We DO'NT need U with us! THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID! DONT BE SHY, cum in well kill you fuck We are serious! No bitches pussies assholes zombies soilders around well make you ded**

**O wait grils come on were lonely and Bill here was too faggy to live hes right bills a fag glad we got him fuck right punk ass bitch wasnt a man anyway we showd him ddint we**

_How terrifying, I'm trespassing anyway._

The door was locked from the other side. Fortunately, a cramped but suitably over-sized ventilation grate lay to the side, and with a little fiddling she had wrenched it open and crawled inside. She turned on her flashlight, navigating her long but slender body against the enclosed metal and struggled not to cause a racket. Leather boots and gloves chafed loudly, echoing across the hallways, and she half-expected for a half-naked cannibal to start nibbling her ass because that would just be lovely.

She heard voices as she reached a fork in the shaft. There was an overwhelmingly repulsive stench emanating from the left turn, while light shone out at the end of the right tunnel along with the grumbling and nervous laughter of several men. The inhabitants of this place.

_Should I risk scoping out how many are there? Oh, why not. These idiots didn't bother to safeguard the vent shafts anyway._

Taking out a mirror and painstakingly slithering silently towards the light, she took notice of the inane conversations taking place.

"I can't fucking take this!"

"Stop bitching, you kept hogging all the meat!"

"Fucking shut up or I swear I'm gonna ram a spike up your ass!"

Lying just out of sight, she tilted her mirror around to take stock of the recreation room below. A few sad emergency lights, along with several sorry excuse for candles, illuminated a musty dump of a hideout where 6 men lurked. Torn jeans and shirts and bras and discarded boxes of food adorned the floors, all of it raw flesh. One light-haired youth, gangly and starved, nervously carved notches into the incoherent mess of bodily fluids and burns that stained the walls. Most of the men were hunched over on a pool table, egging on a burly man who was busy smashing his gun into a screaming man whose face was freely running with blood. They laughed, stroking their own blood-stained bludgeons and knives and pistols with a lover's caress.

_What a charming bunch. Just like everyone else here. Should I blame Alma here, or are these guys simply enjoying the anarchy?_

_Get away from them. There's 6 of them, 1 with a Replica Penetrator. They may be civilians but a gang of raging punks are not a laughing matter._

She crawled to the other side of the tunnel, still unable to channel the commotion out of her head. "What's that, spic?" the burly man was saying in a mockingly concerned tone. "Crying crocodile tears for those bitches? Oh, no, you're crying to your widdle mummy, aren't you!" The others cheered while the victim muttered insults in a broken-jawed language. "We don't need pussies like you here! Isn't that right? Oh, are you scared? STOP CRYING, NOBODY GIVES A SHIT!" He was roaring, and then the Tracker reached the other grate.

Ten feet directly beneath the grate lay a vat of blackened, ill-looking meat, lit by an irritatingly soft blue light. She surmised that this was either the waste disposal room or the storage room - probably an interchangeable state at this rate. She glared down, trying to judge whether she was about to trap herself with those _people_, and heard the flesh calling to her.

_Of course. It's not meat. It's humans. And those men would be killing their own food._

She closed her eyes, nodded to herself, and then leaped down. She smashed through the grate with a muffled thud and softened her fall with the tub of rotten innards. An instant analysis of the room revealed it to be filled with humanoid bodies - stacked on tables, clumsily hacked to pieces and lumped together in useless freezers, or impaled through their chests with meat-hooks. Altogether, she counted at least two dozen, almost exclusively women, strung up like animals, throats slit with butcher knives and limbs being chopped out at random. Dead eyes from severed heads focused on her, nibbled fingers pointed at her, faceless torsos with "Whore" on them lay in the tubs, hearts beat and lungs wheezed and teeth chattered. Absolutely nowhere was there a spot that was not tainted with splashes of blood.

To her, they were always screaming. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the ever-present spirits that begged her to free them, and found that she couldn't move. She trembled, twitched, felt nothing more than to curl up and hide from them and stop them from _hurting her_.

_I've gotten over this bullshit back when dad finally scraped enough money to send me to kindergarten. Don't be afraid. Just feel for them._

"...no...finish it...end it..." whispered a particularly strong voice. A woman's. The Tracker glanced around, and found herself drawn to a locker in the far corner of the room. This was dangerous, but somehow she wanted to know _everything they did_. She even used her PDA to photograph the madness, permanently freeing spirits from the chains of existence by filming them (although she knew the footage would be unusable). She got to the locker, pulled it open, and a dead young woman fell on her.

**Marisa blinked wearily, trying to shake the blood out of her head, and realized that the men were surrounding her. "Bitch," they laughed as she tried in vain to break free from their circle, kicking and threatening them. "It's your own fault. Like all the others. Y'all need to learn some manners. Some respect."**

**"Here," Jake said, green eyes glimmering as he forced her knife out of her broken wrist. "Let me handle that, sweetie."**

**"Hey, are you a virgin?" Brett asked in complete seriousness. She spat in his face and thrashed, crying out for help. They slapped her and pulled her throat and smashed her face and twisted her breasts, but not so much that she'd be knocked unconscious. They knocked her down and their hands were all over her and knives cut through her jacket and blouse and jeans and underwear and into her skin and then she couldn't stop them.**

**Bill thought it wasn't cool that they were hurting her so much that she wasn't pretty anymore, so they beat him to death while she watched. It would be over soon, wouldn't it. It would be over. One took his turn to thrust inside her, feeling and giving his own satisfied compliments, and then the other smugly took over, and then the others came and it wouldn't stop. It went on. And on. For hours. For days. She was bleeding all over and couldn't breathe and they were fighting over her meat and one day she found her legs were gone and her nose was gone and her hair was ripped and she wasn't Marisa Redford anymore and she couldn't cry anymore. She couldn't move anymore. She didn't make any more noise. She became boring.**

**So, a few days later, they found someone else and locked her in here.  
><strong>  
>The Tracker opened her eyes. She was on the floor, and she had been crying.<p>

_Enough._

She took her knife out, opened the door and someone almost stumbled into her. She rammed the blade up through his trachea and sliced down, wrenching him back into the room of the victims and throwing him to the floor. She stomped onto his skull, letting his anguished gurgles echo across the room, and could only imagine how he laughed as Marisa begged that she'd help them if they wouldn't kill her. She took the knife out of his throat, letting his blood fountain out and drench the floor, and stabbed him in the temples. His arms flailed out momentarily, he let out a weak moan of agony, and then he never moved again.

_And then there were five._

She walked out of the room once more, grateful to find that the fusebox was right beside the door. She immediately hacked its wires apart, a vicious spark plunging the room into darkness, and she activated her thermal vision. The men, for their part, struggled to find their flashlights and cut the room into swathes of light. But she was faster and quieter than them, and they were quite clearly terrified.

"Shit... it must be one of those ninja pussies!" whispered a bearded man, his baseball cap tight over his mullet. His flashlight swept across the ceiling, where she had grappled up onto the rafters, and then went down again.

"Or a freak. Stay together, shine your lights everywhere, find this monster!" growled the penetrator-wielding thug. The Tracker could see four clear heat signatures below her, with the 'spic' lying underneath the pool table with most of his head missing and his naked rear impaled with an iron spike. That left her a skinny teenager who was carrying a knife, a burly man wielding an advanced piece of prototype military hardware, another man shakily holding up an axe, and the short bearded man with a half-loaded revolver in his fists. There was a painful silence, in which the men spread across the room and into the kitchen, and then there was a collective shriek.

"YOU FUCKING CUNT, WHERE ARE YOU!" screamed the burly man as the Tracker quietly jumped down and dug her knife deeply into the straggling bearded man's back. She held his mouth and stabbed him repeatedly, preventing his gurgles from reaching the others' ears, and tried to drag his body further back into the darkness. His legs beat a frantic tattoo against the floor, however, and she had to contend herself with one last gut-liberating slash through his ribcage before moving away from him. She didn't need HIS gun.

Her heart was thundering, and she was aware that she was breathing audibly. She shut her mouth, but not before the burly man burst out and started firing inanely, sending iron stakes through the room in bright flashes and absolutely destroying their own furniture.

"I KNOW YOU'RE THERE, BITCH! YOU'LL PAY FOR KILLING HIM!" he roared in the completely wrong direction, and she drove her knife deep into the base of his skull - it would prove a challenge to wrench out, but that would be for later. He let out a muffled cry, and she took that opportunity to wrest the nail-spewing weapon out of his thrashing arms.

She fired carefully, the ammo counter telling her that there were only 6 nails left. One spike hit the dark-skinned man directly through the groin, eliciting a blood-chilling howl of agony as he failed to feel for the castrated organ and crumpled to the floor, sobbing in pain. She fired again, this time nailing his neck to the ground with a vicious crack and a few dying gurgles of blood. A growl alerted her to the last one, the teenager, and a nail to the thigh quickly took care of him.

She was panting and sweating, and in her head she felt a familiar fear.

_I'm enjoying this, aren't I?_

"P-please!" the doomed teenager shouted.

***

The boy's eyes bulged out like over-boiled eggs and he made the most awful gagging noises. His face turned a grim purplish shade, his veins popped, and something cracked. He pissed himself. And then he stopped writhing. She couldn't look at his eyes.

_They deserved it. They all fucking deserved to die._

There wasn't much in the way of ammo that these psychopaths had, and she was in no mood to eat their 'food'. In fact, there was pretty much nothing she'd gained from this. Her clothes were smeared with blood, and it would take some doing to wash it off.

She left the mutilated corpses behind, certain that she'd never be haunted by them, and was startled when she opened the exit door to find a gloomy light peering out. The mushroom cloud hung over the devastated parking lot, wreathed in swathes of graying, ash-strewn sunlight. The pathetic urge to bathe in the light and kiss the ground entered her head, but she reminded herself that the safehouse wasn't too far away.

_It's been a long night._


	7. Intermission: The Senator

The half-naked senator stared into the mirror and liked what he saw. His coppery hair, fashionably speckled with gray, was slicked back, exposing a widow's peak unaffected by age. His one uncovered eye stared out, its deep gray shade only highlighting a steely determination that was enhanced by the deep shadows beneath his eyelids. His square-jawed face was weathered, its creases and scars only serving to enhance a sagely countenance that was deeply troubled by the present - and his dimpled, shiny smile, a proud result of first-class living, gave him a fatherly, even heroic appearance. His body, though withered away from fifty-five years of restless living, still retained enough muscle to garner respect. He could count on his looks because almost everyone else trusted them.

"Everything I do, I do for everyone else," he whispered. After miming a firm handshake, he got dressed into his tailor-made pinstripe suit and grinned - these were clothes that he had earned. He strolled out of his bathroom, downing a coffee the wife had courteously left beside the door, and walked out into Capitol Hill. His Bugatti Veyron was waiting for him across his beautifully ordered lawn, and his tuxedo-clad chauffeur eagerly waved at him.

"Good to see you, Mr. Andrews."

"Likewise, son," Harrison Andrews replied in comfortably crisp, clear tones. "Take me to the capitol. Time to tell my people my truth."

Within an hour, Harrison was standing behind a podium. Thousands of eager faces stared at him, and with the news-fiends hovering around he knew millions of Americans had their attention focused on him. It had been this way ever since the disaster two months ago and Harrison would be a liar if he said he didn't love it.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I understand you have the right to have doubt about the latest bills we are passing. I will not denounce the allegations that I am merely, in the words of one American, "riding the publicity for the election" - I am sure you have all placed enough faith in our current president to deliver us through these troubled times far more effectively than anything I am capable of. But I assure you that I am acting in the best interests of all Americans, and that my only intention is for our nation to be secure.

As we are all aware of, the enforcement of martial law over the city of Fairport is a necessity that will remain indefinitely. We shall never forget the countless thousands of innocent men, women and children who lost their lives on that day of infamy, August 25th 2025, and the suffering of the millions who have lost their homes, loved ones, and practically everything save for hope. The perpetrators of this on-going atrocity will be brought to justice."

Applause followed this, and Harrison waited for whole minutes before it died down. He continued.

"There have been rumors that our armed forces have been mishandling the situation - that they are disorganized, inefficient, and actively impeding attempts to rescue and protect our people. Let me say that to insult the prowess of the brave men and women who dedicate their lives to preserving our way of life is to disregard the sacrifices they make in ensuring we prosper and live without fear.

In addition, the rumors of government contractors getting involved in policing and illegally trespassing the area are to be disregarded. Mark my words, we are carefully investigating the activities of Armacham Technologies - and, considering their track record and current role in supplying and supporting our rescue operations, they are a reliable, trustworthy, and patriotic ally. They are true Americans. You can trust them as much as you trust me."

"Liar," a woman's voice spat. Harrison stopped and smiled benignly at the severely dressed brunette, noting that a redheaded girl clung around her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know what you are talking about."

"I said you're lying to us!" she hissed contemptuously, her face alight with anger. Harrison took note of how pretty she was. "You know what's really going on, and you're taking money to lie to our faces! ATC's nothing more than dogs your generals forgot to put a leash on!" The cameras were turning to her now, and she seemed a little taken-aback at this. Harrison sighed at the attention the heckler was stealing.

"What's your name, madam?"

"Amelia Fox, and my husband died for you!"

Harrison shook his head slowly. He vaguely recalled that name, and realized who she was talking about. She could be a problem.

"I am sorry to say that you are severely mistaken, my dear. What you are publicly accusing me of is nothing more than the product of rumors. Ignorant slander. Why, it even borders on treason. I am a descendant of a long line of patriots responsible for strengthening this country. I am a highly-decorated veteran of wars dedicated to preserving our way of life. I am your beloved senior senator of Washington State. Who are you to say I cannot be trusted?"

"You can't lie forever," She snapped back. "We'll find out who you really are." Her daughter, at this point, sobbed and the woman immediately stopped to embrace her. Her anger appeared to dissipate, leaving only weak resignation behind. Two guards quietly escorted her out the door without resistance. Harrison continued as though she had never existed, extensively laying out the plans for the future.

After several hours of exhausting Q&A, in which practically every news agency and corporate representative in existence along with the odd foreign minister shook hands and asked carefully scripted questions, Harrison retired to his office. He had just sat down on his chair, smoking a pipe that had been his family's for generations, when his phone buzzed. He opened it up and read the encoded message.

_Not impressed, senator._

_Your boy is useless. Get Salyers to listen to him. We all need Wade intact.  
>Think about your future. Everyone's future. Not just mine.<br>-GA_

Harrison frowned. Genevieve was never impressed. The woman was smart, ruthless, and a prime bitch - and he admired that in a woman. Her attitude reminded him of himself. He suspected her frigidity came as much from her job as it was from her relying on brains rather than beauty. It hadn't been her looks that had once drawn Harrison's eyes...

Despite the security measures he had put in place, it was dangerous for her to directly contact him. That's where Hoyle came in. The little man was a buffer between her, the frustratingly skeptical Salyers, and Harrison himself. Hoyle was his launderer, his eyes and ears, the man he could always rely on for the gritty details.

He dialed Hoyle's number, and immediately received the answer. "Hello, senator," the man drawled. Despite his appreciation of the man's abilities, Harrison would never enjoy the condescending tone Hoyle always seemed to have. "Nice speech."

"What did the Board tell you?" Harrison demanded.

"They haven't caught on yet, but they're about to. They still think there's no chance of salvaging the situation."

Harrison sighed. "Aristide's point is that the situation will only get worse in the future if we continue to keep things going the way they are. They have to send in a proper containment team NOW and get control of the Origin girl. Damn it, the corporates have enough people in bed with them to buy the whole city!"

He didn't care to lower his voice; only April could hear him anyway. "They already own the city and crapped in its backyard, and _now_ they're twiddling their thumbs about this? Fuckin' corporates..." He swallowed, and then softly continued. "Men like you are the only people they'll care to talk to. God knows I've stuck my neck out far enough."

Hoyle was unimpressed. "What do you think I've been trying to do, Andrews?"

"Not enough. How have the trackers been faring?"

"Good progress on most of them. I'll warn you about the woman - she's playing me as much as you've been playing her."

"Dodgson?" Harrison sighed wearily once more. "They've all got agendas."

"I've been trying to dig into her files, see if there's anything she might want. I think _you_ might know more."

"Enough to eliminate her once she's finished. You know how much I hate loose ends."

Hoyle chuckled at that. "Well, I'm gonna take Genevieve for a drive. She seems pretty assured things are going to be fine - Salyers even complained about how she's doing better than the rest of the directors."

"Damn right she is. Keep pressuring those buffoons with everything you got." Harrison snapped, and with that he closed the connection. Then he buried his face in his hands.

What could he do? He knew what he was doing was going to turn out all right for everyone involved in the long-run. He knew the majority loved him, that hecklers and dissidents were just oddities natural in any disaster. He knew both Armacham's leaders and his own countrymen were counting on him to deliver.

But the fear remained. The Fox woman was right - he couldn't keep lying forever. One day, someone outside of the loop would catch onto the fact that he was colluding with criminals and then he'd be finished. The worst traitor in American history. His only consolation was that, if he was going down, he was taking Armacham and the brass down with him - every last one of those bastards.

The door opened, and the secretary meekly poked her head out.

"Mr. Andrews, you alright?"

Harrison looked up, smiled warmly, and said, "I've been meaning to have another discussion with you, my dear April." As the girl nervously sidled towards him and he ran his hands up her slender back, he gazed out the window. Somewhere, beyond that beautiful blue sky, lay an impossibly still mushroom cloud.


	8. Dark Embrace

**Dark Embrace**

The sun was not cooperative today, its sad light diminished to a pallid green by the cloudy sky. Arid red dust caked the flattened pathway, and to her sides, blackened matchsticks that had once passed for trees scattered the ruins, alternately solidified into ashen grey lumps or rotting brown carcasses. A sign, defiled by rust and profanity, lay before her, beckoning visitors to** Enjoy The Beauty Of Everdale Forest**. The cloud was less than ten miles now, its repulsive greyness dominating the skyline and raining an unending hail of smouldering ash, disgusting smoke and an unstoppable stench of rot. Even with her mask on, merely standing still made her want to lie down, or, horror of horrors, take off her mask and breathe in the poisonous air.

_Just get through the park. The house is close. You can rest then._

She ran, trying her best not to let urgency overcome the need to remain silent. Her weapons were empty save for the nail-gun she cradled in her arms, but so far there seemed to be no need for protection. Whatever life here had disappeared, with even the paranormal monstrosities having retreated underground, patiently awaiting the fall of the sun. She had 8 hours before that happened, and traversing the park shouldn't take longer than an hour. A hollow emptiness filled the air, a sound more dangerous than any din or roar. Her boots pounded against the rough mud, avoiding skeletons and pools of blood leaving unmistakable tracks in the dirt. She should be able to hear intruders long before they got to spitting/biting distance.

"Lovely place." She knew that voice. Before she could stop herself, she'd twisted herself around and saw a man she knew to be dead. She ignored the illusion and pressed on through the twisted trees. Somebody dropped from the tree, falling straight through her and smashing their head against the trunk with grotesque results. She inwardly cursed - the pills were wearing off and she couldn't take another unless she sealed herself away from the toxic air. She ran on with renewed vigor, ignoring the pounding in her heart and the way her legs stubbornly insisted on feeling jelly-like.

"Annie..." he said again. She twitched, recalling how lovely he had sounded whenever he had used that tone of voice, and turned around. The forest enclosed her, the uprooted trunks and broken branches seeming to actively gate her into an increasingly tight path. She rolled her eyes and pressed forward, refusing to listen to how the dirt yielded to the footsteps of someone behind her. She climbed over trees and hacked apart brittle limbs with her knife, ignoring him as he got ever closer.  
><em><br>"STOP IT STOP IT YOU MONSTERS PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP!"_ In the clearing, a translucent woman was being assaulted by ten see-through men. She went out of her way to charge through them, destructively dispersing the spectres and not allowing herself to look back.

"Come on, Annie," he whispered in her ear, and even through her tunic his warm palm sent a shiver down her spine. She shook her head, shrugged him off, and kept going to where the river would be. She wasn't lost, no, not at all. It was an utter coincidence that the best path to the house was this route, wasn't it? It wasn't like she wanted to have anything to do with this damned fucking park in this hellish city anyway.

_"Takeo, no one can see us here."_

_"Perfect. I can take all the time I want for your examination."_

She ground her teeth in an effort to fight off distracting thoughts, knowing that they would only get worse. It wasn't Takeo Inori. He wouldn't be able to return to her after what she did to him. It was a trick. It had to be. Yet standing before her was him, exactly as perfect as she'd always remembered him to be. As tall as her, with intense black eyes and longish dark hair that felt so wiry against her fingers, with arms that caressed her softly, with a body firm and yet sensitive to the touch. She closed her eyes and reached for her mask, only to frown. What the hell? No, this wasn't him, he was dead!

She shoved him aside carefully, his firm features still fixed in that loving smile, and did not stop running until the trees regrew. The hellishly thick air lightened, the sky reverting to a blue shade that bathed a brilliantly green mass of grass and flowers and bark and birds that silently called through the air. Even then, there lay no human soul this far out save for her. He no longer counted.

Out before her was the sun, dominant over a cloudless sky and peering over a silent sheet of clear water. The skyscrapers hanging far beyond the curtain of trees were bereft of fire or other flaws. A solitary stone lay by the shore, and he was already there, serenely cross-legged and patiently waiting for her. He smiled as he gazed straight into her eyes.

"We've been waiting a long time, Annie," he purred. "Three years. I forgive you."

She was shaking slightly as she aimed her weapon between his eyes. He didn't resist, didn't beg, didn't try to stop her. Just like last time. She halted, then threw the Penetrator away and stood there, letting her eyes capture his image in all its glory. Then she strode towards him, wanting to breathe in the scent of dew and feel cool air brush against her face. He had his hand stretched out, feeling for her chest. Her gloved hands brushed against his face, his abdomen, his back, marveling in how believably familiar it was. Day after day after day, they had had this spot to themselves, and it seemed impossible to think she'd have a chance to see him again. They embraced, his hands clasped against her cheeks as they kissed-

-and she was embracing air, emptiness, and as she breathed in she gagged and spluttered. Her eyes immediately tore up and she struggled to reattach her mask, determined to return to the past. Where was he? Oh, he was right beside her, tackling her to the ground and then firmly clasping her arms above her head. He was bold in his nakedness, a chiseled figure given life. Even without feeling it, she giggled, because that was how she used to react to this.

"What do we tell the boss when we get back?" she said smoothly, knowing how eager he was.

"We were conducting some reconnaissance," he whispered, tracing his finger down her navel and tenderly avoiding the grotesque scar in her side. The scar which he himself had mended. She smiled, letting him do the work - she'd been in charge last time. When he grabbed at her clothes, she stopped smiling. She remembered THIS.

He was a bloody worm, contorted and broken into every imaginable position and unable to move. He lay atop of her, wheezing through pierced lungs, his eyes begging for help. She knew he didn't want this. She hadn't wanted him to get hurt in the first place, and making those bastards suffer for touching him hadn't saved him at all. Every second longer was another second of pointless pain, and she told herself that it wasn't wrong to shoot him in the skull. So, this time, she shot him once more.

_She crouched over him, her mouth to his. Her hair, damp from a fresh dive, was drawn around him like a tent. She slid herself down, introducing herself to the rest of him._

She stumbled to her feet, unable to see him. She blinked blearily, hoping to escape from the desolate world of the present. Panting, she leaned against the rock, feeling no security in the weapon in her arms. Her cheeks felt wet for some unearthly reason, and there was an aggravating whimpering coming from behind her.

A woman sat on the rock, her face covered in her hands. She was gently rocking back and forth, her head trembling dangerously, and her sobbing got louder. It escalated into a wail, a horrid shriek that refused to cease, and the woman blankly stared out at the dry, bony river bed. It was HER.

_I'm sorry. Why. Why did I mess up. Why did I mess up. I hate myself._

_Get away from all of this._

The Tracker ran away, unable to tell whether the screaming was coming from within her mind or from her own raw voice.


	9. The Wade Estate

Breaking into Dr. Wade's mansion was miles easier than forgetting about the screaming woman in the park. Even though she was certain that every abandoned building in the city was crawling with freaks, this modern castle felt too still for any sort of life to still linger on. Iciness gripped her as she climbed through the kitchen window, and refused to mind its own business.

Her eyes spun as they focused on the walls, simultaneously peeling and polished. Rotten carpet crunched beneath her boots. Her hands met dirt that was caking the collapsed floor while not actually existing. Warm sunlight baked the room from an open window.

Her body itched intensely with anticipation - there were Relics EVERYWHERE.

The building schematics were still unclear to her, but she needed to extract data from the homeowner's room before she could enter the shelter hidden beneath the cellar. The Tracker went out into an entrance hall which was far larger than any house she'd ever been inside before.

Silence, which had been so loud so as to drown out any other sound, now departed. The soft, melodious sounds of a piano being played echoed from across the grand entrance hall. Like how she'd once played _Fur Elise_ pitch-perfectly three times in a row for Mr. Diego. Good to know that ghosts still tried to amuse themselves.

She twisted the carefully-carved handle of the musical room's door, and a horrible crash accompanied the anguished shriek of a woman.  
><strong><br>_Mother sits on her piano stool, looking at her bent red fingers and crying. She isn't very pretty when she does that. Then she sees me__,__and snaps._**

**_"You stupid child. Get out of here NOW! Don't ask your father about it!"_**

The piano stool still spun as she opened her eyes. She frowned - had she just seen a glimpse of some poor boy's life? Was this all the Relics had to offer? She routinely poured ashes on the stool to neutralize it, burned the object, and then scooped its remains up before returning to the entrance hall.

On the second floor, staring at her was a dark-haired woman. Her black eyes were wide with terror, gazing down at the intruder below, and in a flash she was gone.

Intrigued, the Tracker readied her knife and quietly stalked up the stairs. Looking down upon her from high above were a series of stern portraits, containing people who were far prettier and richer than anyone the mercenary personally knew. She guessed from their fashion sense that they dated back to the Union era.

_Adrian Wade and Moira Bristow_ _- the progenitors of one long, 'well-bred' family. Not surprised that they'd have their hands in ATC's pie._

"My family - gods among men."

The voice that, back in the Mannequin warehouse, claimed to love her was back with yet another cryptic message. She bit her lip - was that spirit bound to this place? If so, why? She got to the second floor and looked down a ridiculously long hallway. Walking forward made each step feel slower and heavier, and she became aware that a giant shadow swallowed her. She was paralyzed as he spoke.

**_"You worthless bastard. I've spent ten years clothing, feeding and sheltering your flimsy body from the world, and you repay me with sneaking out of classes, pestering your mother and..." he trails off, then rests a wooden music box on my head. "Creating this? You stupid, pathetic, imperfect child. I'll teach you what it costs to be ungrateful. You are NOT in control."_**

What followed next was...painful. When it was over, the paralysis left the Tracker's body, and she growled. That particular memory was of a person who was almost certainly dead - unfortunate because the mercenary's knife would look good with some more blood on it.

**_"Don't talk about your father like that!" My mother says. "He's a brave man of a proud tradition, and he's doing his best to make you a better man!"_**

_**"I know what he wants, mother." And I do know. Perfection. I understand that far better than Aaron Wade and that callow cunt he calls a wife.**_

The Tracker peered into each room. Most of them were destroyed, their floors collapsed or the ceilings picked away, but the fourth to last door yielded a pleasant surprise - the bedroom of a young Harlan Wade. Moving in, she saw a frighteningly thin boy sitting on a mattress in a meticulously Spartan room, his parted brown hair ruined and his wide glasses askew.

He didn't react, so she mostly ignored him as she scoured his drawers, trunks and closet. She removed a large billboard of academic awards to find a small cubby hole containing a CD case. She smiled at the quaintness, and took it - whatever it really contained. She moved onto the safe, and the boy grabbed her arm like an iron vise.

Harlan, now a father, spoke to her.

_"What did I tell you about privacy, Alice?" I whisper. My daughter closes her eyes and shakily bows her head down. She was learning discipline very well, so I only struck her five times this round._

The Tracker struck her knife out at the spectral figure, dissolving it and allowing her to quickly pick the safe open. She found what the good, child-abusing doctor was so keen to hide in plain view:

Letters. Most of them were entertainingly shameless, with plenty of code-names, scientists, large financial sums and clinical reports on atrocities committed in the name of one man's progress. At the bottom of the incriminating pile was a soppy love-letter, addressed to a certain "Elizabeth".

_Figures that he'd consider an ex-girlfriend as important as his crimes against sanity._

Tucking the stack into her bag, she continued on.

She moved out of the room, and into the main bedroom, dreading the next vicarious vision she was about to receive. Nothing happened as she moved inside, giving the absurdly lavish four-poster bed a wide berth. A small box lay on the counter beside the bed, and it contained a few glossy black hairs.

Her head spun, and even without touching the hairs she could hear them.

**_"Can't a woman have a moment of peace?" she says in that irritatingly monotonous, bitter tone of hers. There seems to be a fear in her eyes tonight, and I find HER disapproval to be pretty ungrateful. I set her straight._**

_**"We made an agreement. You agreed that my child - our child - will be perfect, and you tested all my compounds and procedures on yourself for her sake. She'll be better than you ever could be."**_

_**"Yes." Flatly. "Yes, she will be."**_

_**"But she won't be around for another month! Do you...find me repulsive?" I give an obligatory laugh, not bothering to back off.**_

_**"What on earth are you talking about?" she says, knowing exactly what she means. She tries to get away, but the stupid bitch is winded easily and I pin her down. She pleads.**_

_**"No, stop - leave me alone! Leave her alone!" The audacity of her, using her child as an excuse for laziness!**_

_**"Why?" I ask, hurt by her betrayal. I need her more than anything else I'd ever had before, and now she's refusing to give her end of the bargain? The nerve! Not that it matters - my father may have been both a horrible monster and a better person than I can ever be, but he was wrong about me.**_

_**I do know how to control my family.**_

Gasping, the Tracker struggled off the bed and reminded herself that the pain was not real. She walked, stiffly, back into the main hall, not interested in living through more abuse.

"Come here," an invisible girl hissed in her ear. A door creaks open, and, hesitantly, the tall woman stepped into the pink bedroom. A pretty young blonde girl stared at her from a framed photograph, smiling wistfully as she embraced her bespectacled father. The room was cluttered - dolls, mirrors, shoes, dresses, and photos of handsome young men.

The door slammed shut, and with it went the Tracker's vision. Only the soft, repetitive rocking of a cradle and a woman's humming filled the air. Walking back, she felt arms grab hers and wrench her into an abyss. She fell, and hit the ground, and lay there, gasping. Ash swirled out from the window and settled itself upon her.

**_"Alma," I mutter to myself, pacing around the room for strength. "My child, my black swan. You took Elizabeth away from me. Tonight I'll return the favor."_**

The Tracker managed to beat down the fragile wooden door off its hinges, and stumbled down the stairs in a daze.

_Alma? An Alma or THAT Alma?_

Finding the cellar and activating her headlamp, she traversed the dark corridors of the basement without a hitch until she reached a secure door with an elaborate 40-character password. A couple of seconds with her code breaker bypassed that and she was inside the safe house.

She didn't feel very safe.

Even in darkness, a gentle thrumming in some obscure corner of the panic room made it clear that there was electricity. There weren't any conspicuous vents in the area, or traces of human leftovers in the room that her lamp and goggles could find. Those were good signs. What worried her, what mattered, was the fact that she really, really wanted to sleep.

Petty as it seemed, she was exhausted. Having been eager to breathe in air, however stale, that wasn't merely filtered poison, she'd removed her mask and let the coolness rest upon her tongue. A stream of bile half-heartedly worked its way out from her throat and she gladly let it out, pulling off her mask and purging the ashen mess out into a waste-bin she'd stumbled into.

She tried getting to her feet and wound up with a throbbing pain in her forehead. It looked pathetic, even though no one she'd care about would see it, and the relief of embarrassment chilled her. Her muscles, stretched taut and antagonized by drugs, were now leeched of all enthusiasm. She would have loved the idea of submitting to the vagaries of slumber if she hadn't had something worthwhile to do here.

_Eighty-five hours of work this cycle. Hope I've struck the right balance between consuming suppressants and agitators. It'll make the dream better._

But I need to tell my client about what I have first. She needs it.

Lurching to the rest room with considerable effort, she flicked on the light and tested the water. It tasted metallic and filmy, but she drank it anyway and filled her canteen. She took off her jacket and ran it under the lukewarm jet of tap-water, furiously scrubbing the old bloodstains off of it.

The tub was flowing in crimson long before her top could be considered clean. She thought about taking a bath herself, but conceded to swiping her head under the stream of water and counting to three.

She looked at herself. She was a total wreck, little more than the fiendish maniacs of the city, and found it a good disguise. A younger, vainer part of her shrieked out in horror at her matted black hair and the fevered yellow of her sweat-strewn face. One green eye and one blue eye dazedly glared back at her, both bloodshot and sunken into black sockets.

_I look like a lovely maniac. At least that's not a disguise._

Revitalized, she staggered back to the main room, making a beeline for the computer with a cathode-ray monitor. As she soon discovered, Wade's computer system was far more utilitarian, spartan and old-fashioned than that of the other executives. That also happened to make it contain far more sensitive, intact data than anyone else.

Also, by happy chance, the wireless network this machine was on seemed to be on a separate one from Armacham's - allowing her to hijack the line and talk to anyone outside the city. The encrypted files were no matched for the code-crackers Hoyle had given her, and soon she found herself swamped in data.

She read a bunch of self-pitying journal entries, listened to several audio tapes, and even bothered to watch a video - the latter of which involved the bespectacled old scientist addressing one of his daughters, pretending to feel remorse for wiping the other daughter from existence after treating her like a piece of meat. She stopped that video after a few minutes, her head spinning in pain, and decided that this batch would help the client a lot.

She spent a few minutes drafting and disguising an eloquent message to her, attaching the relevant contents of her PDA and unpacking the contents of Wade's files. The file was absurdly large. Athena927, the clever young girl, was hopefully still alive and busy.

Ten minutes after she sent the message, she'd finally managed to get on the line with Hoyle once more.

"How come you're still alive, Janet?" His voice rang strangely, as though he were trapped in a jar. "I'm just curious."

"Because I want your payment." That was true.

"Real cute. So _that's_ why you haven't done anything productive since we last met."

She frowned. "I've 'eliminated' Conroy and cleared out a few Relic sites. That's more than you could ever do."

"Prove it."

"How? Photographs can be faked. I can lie. You'd never know the difference."

"I – no, THEY need the targets gone and the Relics recovered."

"I'll handle it."

"Really? How about Nedson Square. That ring a bell, missy?"

_Nedson Square? Oh yeah, I blew up the library a couple of nights ago._

"Don't call me that."

"Jeez! Lower your voice, sweetie, there are kids next door!"

She hadn't raised her tone at all. "You're a lousy comedian, Hoyle."

"Hey, hey- cool it, lady, okay? Don't get all hysterical on me!"

"So Nedson Square was 'important', then."

"Yes. Yes, it was. You should know why."

_More victims._

"What did you expect from one person? You've got other thugs on the case, Hoyle. Just be glad that nobody's talking about removing you."

"Ooooh...so now you're screaming to kill me, you little bitch?"

_...screaming? What's going on?_

"I'm not raising my voice, Hoyle."

"Christ, just stop! Stop, you psychotic cunting fucking bitch. SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE HELL UP!"

"Calm down."

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

She didn't say anything, letting Hoyle rant and rave about her saying things that she clearly never uttered.

"You need a drink?" she asked after a long while. Hoyle grunted uncomfortably, muttering to someone else off the line, and a flash of anger cut into her. "Who is with you?"

He sighed. "Someone more important than your pay-grade, you lil' wild-cat."

_Ignore that. You're playing into someone's sick joke_

"Anyway," Hoyle continued. "Keep your mouth shut. There were several targets there that you missed. Ain't you the lucky one? What was that?"

"Nothing. Names. Now."

"Well, well, you're eager! Alrighty: Trevor Engstrom and Jennifer Ambrosia Mailer!"

"Engstrom's already on the list."

She quickly counted off the last couple of names on her kill-count.

"How about Gerrard Breval and Evelyn Tangier?"

"They need to be alive. Breval's firepower will be more important, but I have a feeling his kind aren't very convinced about being reemployed. There've been traces of Vanek's thugs still in the area, but he hasn't reported in yet. Anyway, I don't care. Your goal is still to-"

"Get to the crater and find out what's going on."

"Aggressive chick, aren't ya?"

"Aren't you interested in Harlan Wade? I was going to say I'm in his house."

"Do you have his data, Janet?"

"Yes. Tell your boss' boss that it's all been destroyed - but take it anyway."

Another irritating chuckle. "Ah, the joys of deception. Speaking of which, have you checked your resume recently?"

She smiled – if he'd done any proper fact-checking, he'd have known that most of her employers were dead by now. "You're not going to find anything worthwhile about me. Give it up."

"Everyone, even you, has a past. Something to care about."

"That's why you won't find out what it is."

"Oh...I will." He was dead serious. "I will."

"Looking forward to it. See you in two weeks."

"Make that one week."

"You're running out of time?" She giggled unconsciously. "Where's the LZ this time?"

"Ah...where we'll want to land."

"Helpful."

"Keep in contact with me every day, Janet. I dunno what's wrong with you today, you bleedin-"

She cut the connection herself. She clasped her hands together and sank her head onto the keyboard, feeling like she'd crashed straight into a brick wall. She didn't resist the siren song of sleep. Her eyes, her skull, her brain, her arms, her legs, her heart all welcomed it. She sank, deeper...

...and deeper...

...she was buried...

...and there she was...

"Come to me, young one. I have what you are looking for..."


	10. Jenna Mailer: Scream

A scream cut through the air of the parking lot and I reluctantly set my book down. I hesitated for a moment, recognizing the voice - it was Sergeant Daniel Suleman, the man with the cybernetic hands and the self-appointed lieutenant of our motley crew. In that long moment, I dreaded the worst. Then I buried the idea. Even trained killers had nightmares, didn't they? Suleman and his bullish boss, Captain William Hendershot, made the group's decisions out of a disdain for civilians – it would be a blow to the Sergeant's ego to tell some woman he was having bad dreams.

Still, it was my obligation as the mother hen to check if he was all right. Madeleine Ivor woke up with a soft shriek, startling her father. Immediately, I ran over to the family's cot, noting that Morgan, like a giant bear, was already wrapped around his daughter.

"It's okay, sweetie," I whispered, straining my weak eyes against the thin light of a lamp and spotting Sally, the girl's adored bunny, lying face-down beside my flats. "We're okay. Bosko back there just had a bad dream."

I squatted down, groaning as I felt my arthritic bones popping, and picked up the girl's doll by a leg. As far as plush dolls went, the blue bunny was a pretty cheap one (some of its stuffing flopped out of its belly as though it were the subject of a botched seppuku), but the girl seemed to like it and that was enough. Anything that made Leine happy would be enough for Morgan and me. Wiping the grime off its smeared face, I gently brought it out to the girl and smiled.

"But Miss Sally here won't let any bad dreams get you, right? Oh, yes she won't," I cooed, my voice low and my dark hand gently brushing the already quiet girl's pale forehead. "Your daddy won't let it happen. I'll be back here with you in just a minute, Leine." I paused, watching the nervous girl's wide eyes reluctantly close and her small body tremble as she sighed sleepily. For a foolish instant, I wished Leine was my own.

"Morgan," I whispered. "I'm going to the GIs. Keep Leine asleep. Of course," I grinned, watching the girl sleepily smiling as she tightly hugged her bunny, secure in her paternal protective bubble. "You're a professional at that." I started off across the dark, enclosed space of the parking level we had holed up in, idly checking that the makeshift curtains that Natalie and I had placed across the walls weren't about to collapse. A sudden itch filled my hands and I peeked through a corner of the curtain.

Damn it. Every time I look at the cloud, I think back to the day the city died. As absurd as it sounds, I was practically at Ground Zero. Guess I was damned lucky to survive. It was absolute lunacy – I remember spending the entire night down locked in my basement, struggling to finish my school reports and stay hidden. The news station was running wild with alarming reports of the terrorists that were rampaging across the city and heading into my district. Just as the sun began to rise, the radio buzzed with relief at the terrorists surrendering. Then a horrible, deafening commotion slashed through the air, knocking me off my feet, and the ceiling collapsed.

By the time I could pick myself out of the rubble, my entire neighbourhood was flattened. A titanic pillar of smoke and dust towered over the sky, choking out any light from the sun and raining ash down onto the cracked streets. I had to cover my mouth with a towel to avoid suffocation. What few neighbours I had were gone, either reduced to the thin dust billowing in the wind or staggering, blindly and skinlessly, into the blackness. On that day, the nightmare began - Fairport, the sprawling, grotesque metropolis where I was born and raised, had gone the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So, in this worst-case scenario, did I do? First, I tried to stay in the burned-out skeleton of my family house, holding out for any sign of rescue. By the time food and water ran out, the only other life that came by was not what I had expected - I had barely managed to avoid getting seen by the terrorists, a group of paramilitary troops with obscure, futuristic gear who had swept by my house without even taking a look inside. I almost called out to them before they mentioned 'eliminating civilian targets'. Smart move. Over the next few weeks, I would come across way, way too many examples of their brutality towards anyone in their way. Yesterday, I heard the two commandos, the cyborg and the captain with the toothbrush moustache, slipping out the term "Replica". At this point, I'm willing to believe those faceless, electrically voiced bastards aren't human.

It was on the sixth day after the shock-wave, driven by hunger and desperation, that I fled my house with only a few clothes, a book, and a first aid kit in a hastily made backpack. I flitted from house to house, store to store, building to building, hiding and tentatively calling out for any survivors. There was nothing. Either everyone had been rescued by now, or had been murdered. There were certainly plenty of bodies, their skin having literally been turned to ash by the heat of the explosion, and more than a few silhouettes were ones that I could recognize. Particularly the smaller ones. There were rescue centers that had posters advertising them scattered across the streets. All of them were empty or broken down, usually both. Disturbingly enough, one hospital seemed to had been home to a brutal massacre - the building was scattered with the torn, bloodied bodies of countless people and bullet holes lined the walls, floors and ceilings. I'm not so sure if these traps were ever intended to help people.

Even on a good day and a pricey car, Fairport is huge enough to make you spend half a day getting from one end to another. It took me about a week of traveling to head down to Oak Street, where a huge wall marked the border of a quarantine zone. The piles of bodies that were scattered across the street were a clear sign that, for whatever reason, the survivors weren't allowed to leave. There were too many dead people for it to be mis-identification. What the hell could I do? In confusion, I went to my old workplace, Archer Primary. What happened there made me ready to give up.

It was by pure chance that I had managed to come across the Ivors, just two weeks ago. I had been scrounging through a dark grocery store, dismayed to find that the food that hadn't been taken had disintegrated into inedible debris. It was the girl's voice that I recognized first - it had been far too long since I heard a child that wasn't in pain.

Turning around the corner, a tall, thin man with auburn hair and a stubby beard stared at me threateningly while a small child wrapped herself around his leg. For a moment, there was a strong silence that was only broken by the child's breathing, before we both simultaneously laughed in relief. He was Morgan Ivor, a mechanic, the strong, silent and sensitive type. His pride and joy was his daughter, Leine – an annoyingly happy-go-lucky but otherwise clever girl who hit it off with me almost immediately. She brings back some of the few good memories I still have about Archer.

It was yet another fluke that saw us meeting the other few survivors, but even with the men being problems I was glad for the help. The soldiers clearly had something to hide, holding secret discussions every hour. The dominant commando, Hendershot, was a brutish man of Southern descent, his slicked hair and thin moustache highlighting a perpetual look of disdain on his face. I still remember how that son of a bitch sniffed at Leine for being a liability, and called me, to my face, a leech and a cripple. He liked to exercise his power on one particular man, Trevor Engstrom, an executive for one of the local companies. Engstrom was an arrogant boy who always delighted in complaining about anything – my cooking, me being dried up, the weather, me being black, Natalie, me being annoying, his clothes getting dirty, me being a woman, the soldiers, me, the 'terrorists', me – and one day Hendershot locked him up in a closet. Suleman loved it, Natalie and Leine protested, and Morgan and I just shrugged it off. The only other woman in the group was Natalie Weeres, and she was an absolute sweetheart – she had been a nurse for a trauma ward, and with her help we struggled to keep the group together.

I could make a comment on how the two women in the group were delegated to traditionally menial roles, but at least we were good at it. I cooked any food that was scavenged, made sure that our camps were well concealed, kept things clean and kept up the morale – or, more specifically, kept the Ivors happy. I'm not too happy for the reason Hendershot had given for staying in the parking garage – the hypocritical bastard was older than me - but I guess I'm grateful for the small slice of civilization within the group. Sometimes, I almost felt like I was teaching a bunch of overgrown children…

Pain stabbed through my right knee and I stumbled, grunting at the sensation. I've been trying my best to ignore it, but the fact remained that my arthritis, undoubtedly accelerated by all the stress and toxins I've inhaled in the last two months, was getting worse and making every movement a pain. This was ridiculous – even now I tried to keep myself fit - why did middle age have to make things so difficult?

Oh, that's right. I turned forty just two days ago, on October 25th 2025. Happy birthday, Jenna Mailer! Have fun huddling in the obliterated ashes of your hometown! Go spoil yourself and steal more pills from Natalie's bag! Listen to the corporate prick and the muscleheads fight it out! Have a dance with your friendly neighbourhood Replicas!

I sighed, then shook the self-pitying out of my head. I slowed my pace, the soldiers' quarters already in sight, and the pain lessened enough for me to put weight on the bad leg without collapsing. Taking a breath at the corner of the makeshift compartment that marked Suleman's sleeping quarters, Natalie suddenly brushed past me and moved out of sight.

Walking out of the corner, I saw Suleman lying in bed. A fair-haired, dirty uniformed man whose hands glimmered in the dark, he had his eyes closed in an almost comical attempt to disguise his vulnerability. Natalie glanced at me, concern written all over her face.

"Another nightmare, Suleman?" I asked. He shrugged, then turned his back to me and beckoned Natalie over. I sighed, limping back to the Ivors. The man only seemed to open to Natalie, and as long as I didn't get someone else's soul bared upon mine I'll be happy. I've got way too much to worry about, right?

Tomorrow's a big day. We're heading out to a secret tunnel at the Fairport Transit Authority center that Engstrom claims will let us slip through the blockade. I didn't trust him, but if he was lying, what would he gain? And it's not like I have any say in what the group does anyway…


	11. Hi, Alma

'I made mom angry today, and I feel so bad. I don't blame her. I hurt Sam today, and hurting people is bad. Even if they should be hurt. Mom told me that bad people would only end up like the unseen people and I don't want that. Mom's right. I don't hate her.

She wasn't too angry at me today. She only locked me in the busy room for an hour, and didn't tie me up. That means I'll have more time to memorize the dance moves with Joey. I want him to try to be almost as good as me. Mom would like that. Why wouldn't she? She's not a bad person, and I'm not either.

I will talk to Farah tomorrow. I like her. She's cute and quiet and so sweet. She's new, but people will like her if I do. I don't like when she gets made fun of for being too stupid and ugly, because she isn't. I know, I've talked to her. Sam's an idiot, but at least he won't want to talk to Farah again. I hope he won't end up like the unseen people, because no one deserves to be lost, forgotten.

Or dead.'

***

She plummeted weightlessly through the void, a distinct feeling of emptiness clutching her consciousness. The ethereal voice reached out to her, almost leering in its tone.

To liken this place to emptiness would be an act of paramount ignorance. To consider it eternity would be to call the Rocky Mountains a mere snowflake. To disregard my advice would be to blind oneself to the infinite possibilities of this plane.

_Save the sales pitch for losers. I'm here for Alma._

The void tremored unpleasantly, making her feel like a clam in someone's mouth. Was this laughter?

Such hubris! It never ceases to amuse me when one utters that name with nonchalance.

You've seen her handiwork, no doubt? She is such a disappointment. All that potential wasted in such a pure being. A woman only marginally bound by the limitations of her human predecessor. Yet she discards all that in her blind tantrum!  
><p>

_You created her, Harlan Wade. You know exactly why she's shitting all over your dreams._

A red vertex snaked itself around her, intangibly binding her limbs.

Out of hatred, my sweet child. A human failure I regrettably passed down to her.

_Show me. I came here to understand._

The voice ceased to offend her synapses, and she smashed into a grated concrete hubcap. Peeling her unharmed body away from the unreal construct, she quickly processed the vivid vision she had now plunged into.

Crusty, deadened mud squelched beneath her boots and musty dust flakes fell continuously from the overcast sky. The grey skeleton of a nuclear power station hung over the little sewage heap she had found herself in, and indecipherable little murals covered the nauseatingly hued walls of the dump. At the heart of the hideous clump was a gnarled old tree, from which a swing hung.

Sitting on the swing, back turned and bloody feet kicking away carelessly, was the enigmatic girl.

Alma.

She must have been in her forties, yet she looked so undeveloped. Her bare feet were calloused and cut, her conservative red dress was frayed, and her wild black hair clashed with skin so translucent it was a wonder that the sunlight did not harm her.

This was the best place in her life. She never stops dreaming about the peace and emptiness she found here. She hates how I took her away from here.

The child's head smoothly swung around like an owl's and glared with the deadest black eyes that the Tracker had ever seen. Shrugging off the insistent voice, she knelt down to Alma's level, hoping desperately that her appearance wouldn't somehow trigger the volatile woman-child. She spoke as smoothly as she could.

"Don't be afraid, Alma. I just want to know."

A maliciously wide grin cracked across the child's face, and she gestured at a suddenly growing mound of crimson, moaning faces that now ringed the tree. The message was clear. Many people had foolishly tried to terrorize her after telling her there was nothing to fear.

She hated that so much.

Everyone was so cruel, stupid and fearful. She hated that.

If she could scribble the word HATE a billion trillion times on the tiniest part of the tiniest atom of everything everywhere, it wouldn't be a quintillionth of the sheer hate she kept amassing every instant. For everyone.

Hate, hate, hate!

She was suddenly pinned to a cold metal table. Her legs were bare, spread wide open, and strapped in place. A septic rag clogged her tongue, painfully strapped in between her lips by a choking leather strap that reduced her voice to animalistic grunts. Men stood all around her, digging hungrily into her body and wrenching out her babies - her beautiful, innocent, helpless, frightened, crying boys - and she saw daddy take them away. He had eyes only for them.

All men were like this with women, and if they weren't then Alma would correct that. Any woman who wasn't her deserved it anyway because they weren't special. If they dared to be mothers, then she would steal their lives and children right back. They all deserved to be hurt.

Especially an evil, ugly black monster. A horribly weak woman whose pathetic body refused to bow down to her. She couldn't read that woman's mind and it was horrible. It was alien and terrifying, and it reminded her far too much of the emptiness where father had finally left her to die. That woman made Alma feel alive, so she had to die. It was the only way to keep her baby and her man safe. If her sons loved her like she'd asked, if ANYONE had listened, none of this would have happened.

"So you're a mother," stated the mercenary to the little girl. "Then you must have had one too. Like me, Alma." She sincerely hoped her voice hadn't quavered. The child's whispered response echoed in the assassin's mind.

You kill people because they deserve it.

"Not everyone, Alma." That sounded rather lame. The child giggled again and began swinging, getting closer to the contract killer with each thrust.

Like Farah?

"Farah was a good person," she spoke hurriedly, not wanting to dwell on the memory. "Sweet and quiet. I missed her, and I killed because of her."

They had to die.

"She didn't. You...didn't. Your mother didn't."

Alma stopped swinging. She was really sensitive about that. Wordlessly, she pointed thin white fingers at the sky. The Tracker followed the girl's gaze to see a familiar mushroom cloud in the faraway horizon.

I dare you to go there. It scares me. If you go there, I will talk to you again.

Before the mercenary could respond, the blackened roots of the gnarled tree suddenly slashed at her face.

***

She woke up to find herself digging a knife out of a dead man's throat.

She had not expected that as well.


	12. The Last Moments Of Carl Anderson

**Lt. Carl Andersen**

As he waddled through the mansion with a flame-bearing cannon the size of a guitar, Carl, honest-to-god, despised his fireproof suit. It itched like mad, soused him in his own simmering sweat, and weighed down every little move he made like a pair of cement shoes. Plus it smelled like the sewage pipe of a slaughterhouse.

But what can a guy do when he's spent the last three weeks in a city that'd make hell lovely? FUBAR didn't even scratch the surface of what was going on. He thought he was a good soldier, better than he used to be - did what he was told, cashed in good paychecks, laid low on islands until the next job. If the world didn't need people like him, he'd have been dead a long time ago.

Even so, Fairport didn't make no sense. Should've seen it coming. It was the largest, most expensive operation company security had ever pulled yet - they fielded a full half of the corps in the first week alone. He'd swallowed his pride, bought into the bravado, had his traditional three beers before the mission, and applied for the best paying job.

Bad choice. Turns out that his bosses screwed the wrong pooch this time - concealing a couple of missing people reports and embezzled funds were one thing, but a nuclear incident was an international nightmare. Worse than that, America had to deal with a full-scale war right within the heart of an idolized city. The brass were tearing their hair out, screaming inane orders to secure this sector and eliminate that squad or to capture this person and burn this place down. He wasn't any scientist, but he doubted radiation could account for the demented nature it seemed everybody had decided to adopt here. The civilians were cannibalizing each other, the rogue experiments were mutated savages, command was ordering wasteful slaughter after wasteful slaughter purely for the hell of it, and...His friends...

...Carl knew he didn't have a right to judge - he'd had plenty of those thoughts to mull over back in prison. But after what happened to those kids, he could never look at Bill and Jack the same way. And he'd seen more than a few men just snap and take themselves out in a blaze of glory - usually those who'd just 'survived' an encounter with one of those inexplicable anomalies.

Speaking of anomalies, retrieving them was the job Carl had been indefinitely exiled to. In addition to the delightfully broad term of 'eliminating evidence' (why downright bombing the town wasn't an option confounded him - wasn't enough attention being drawn to the wars going on?), he had found himself in a select group of similarly misdirected men used to hunt down innocuous objects filled of 'psycho power' or something and capture them before burning the surrounding area down. Perhaps the fire served as a form of exorcism? Infamously enough, these little death runs had the unique bonus of providing a different creative demise for what poor bastard was forced on them. Liquefaction, electrocution, immolation, dismemberment, crushing or simply getting eaten by a dozen dozen skeletons - if it were a miracle to survive those incidents unscathed, then he was a damned miracle maker.

And now they were supposed to hunt down a woman. Hoyle, the greasy joker who had given the order just an hour ago, had said she'd been a shady freelancer who'd borrowed some expensive property from the company in order to explore the city. On her own. That was two weeks ago. Now, according to Hoyle, she'd uploaded a video from this house slobbering about how she was going to hunt down every last member of the Board, burn their families and bury them alive. Good for her, Carl had thought.

Jack, the captain of his squadron, called out. His voice seemed to bite down at Carl's heart.

"Demo Team 73-G, check your readings - the paranormal activity has just spiked." Carl widened his eyes at the news and discovered that his beeping weapon was right - whatever evil was lurking in this place, it had suddenly grown a lot deeper in the blink of an eye.

"This is Theta-89," said Bill. "We're in the basement. Seems like the anomaly's just behind this-" His voice cut off, and Carl knew he had run into trouble.

He swiveled around the musty library like the turret of a tank, his filthy, ill-ventilated helmet at least providing him with some light to bathe the darkness. As thick and uncomfortable as the suits were, they worked - bullets couldn't penetrate, claws and teeth slid over them, infernos did nothing. Hell, he could turn this whole damn room and its thousands of useless, unread books out into something warm and beautiful if anything was stupid enough to come in.

Gunfire suddenly cut in from above him, and the floorboards that made up the ceiling broke. An armored man, his throat anchored by his own grappling rope to a groaning bed, shrieked down before being silenced by a sickening crack five feet above the ground. Jesus! Carl didn't visibly waver, but the speed and methods felt unusual. Civilians were too weak and crude to do this, Replicas were too professional, and the monsters certainly weren't this creative.

"We have three men down," Jack whispered, emotion having left his voice long ago. "Stay calm and follow standard procedures. Mission has not changed. We are to secure Janet Dodgson and the anomalies she was carrying. Bitch thinks it's a game." With those words spat into the mic, Jack's voice clicked off once more. Carl, despite his 7'4 height, flameproof suit and magnesium-combustible flamethrower, felt small.

Like that time his brother locked him up in the basement. After telling him that there were monsters down there. Creatures that loved the dark and could swallow the brightest, hottest light. Creatures that wouldn't kill you right away, because they understood giving hope to someone made it all the more meaningful when it was ripped away.

Screams. An explosion rocked the house.

He shook his head, and strode his way back to the living room for rendezvous. As he bashed down the door, he wondered about Dodgson. Who the hell would want to be in Fairport alone? Who the hell trusted her? If she's stayed alive long enough and been so effective, why kill her?

Unless she'd succumbed to the sickness too.

He strode out to the staircase, and stumbled at the smoke-strewn image. The sweat on his body now felt freezing. How the hell did he not hear this happen?

Six, perhaps seven were strewn out across the devastated entrance. Though each of them had been clad in the same anti-personnel gear he wore - gear powerful enough to resist a tank round - all of them lay in tattered, anguished heaps of pain. One man had his head nailed to the banister by a six-inch titanium rail, the spike penetrating through his ears. Another had been bisected brutally into two, his writhing legs pinned by the crotch to the upper floor and his oozing upper half twitching in a heap twenty feet below. About three were moaning sacks of reddish, melted bones and roasted skin - 4,000 degrees Celsius was no joke. Through the haze, Carl surmised their tanks must have been detonated.

"Carl!" called a sickly, familiar wheeze, and it took all his willpower not to get out into the open. It was a trap. Jack lay in a fetal ball, holding his chest where a fist-sized hole had burst straight through his armor, ribs and lung. Coughing and wheezing, he seemed to curse out loud before lying still. Carl was alone. Again.

Enough of this. He pulled the trigger and swung the weapon everywhere, dousing every corner into the inferno it deserved to burn in. Fuck the anomalies, fuck Dodgson, he just had to get out of the house and-

-a blinding white pain cracked through his spine, and in utter shock he smashed his face into the ground. He couldn't feel anything beneath his thighs beyond a thick, itchy agony, and even moving his head was useless beneath this heavy armor. A few seconds passed, and he hoped it would end like this. The fires would wash away his sin and he'd have purged this little hell of whatever evils his men had caused.

His wishes were not to be answered in that way. A well-polished pair of boots pattered their way up to his face, and kicked him up onto his perforated back. The spike in his gut rippled through his organs. Delirious with pain, he struggled to identify his infernal assailant. It picked and pried at his armor, taking no heed of the impending flames that licked at his feet, and lithe fingers unlocked the latches of his helmet. As it was wrenched off, Carl saw into the eyes of his killer.

And she saw into his. Her eyes, psychedelically mismatched, darted restlessly across his body. Her face was gaunt and pallid, with greasy hair roughly bound up into a skullcap and a gaping-mouthed gas-mask hung around her long neck. Her thick military outfit was bluish-grey, like those of his compatriots, and streamlined to provide a predatory silhouette. As he coughed, struggling to swipe at her, she emptied his pockets and poured every bullet into a slung bag. His fingers refused to stop her.

She cocked her head slightly, peering as though noticing him for the first time, and widened her eyes. She beamed lightly and pounced on him, leaning on his back and pulling his head to meet hers. Feeling her excited breaths on his eyes, he blanched. She was in her element here. A woman who wanted to take hell for herself.

He summoned a globule of phlegm to splatter that lunatic's face, but got a mouthful of leather glove instead. A sudden frown fell upon her, and with one swift flick her mask was now firmly secured to her face. The cold steel of a blade tasted his flesh, and the skin yielded.

Blood. He thought about his papa and his beef business. Damn, he'd thought that was what a man should be. As the blade dug in and severed his carotid, he knew differently.

When he'd left, she'd be waiting.


	13. Jenna Mailer: Fall

They were on the remnants of the street not five minutes after light.

What Jenna hated most about being a refugee was that she never got used to settling down at one spot. It seemed as though every other day would bring about some new train of thought amongst the soldiers in charge of the group, and with that a host of unforeseen consequences as they forcefully uprooted themselves from their current hideout and set out into the terrifying city beyond.

They were constantly low on supplies, despite Jenna's best efforts to ration their canned food and **not **tempt herself to raid Natalie's first-aid kit for something to keep her mind off of her aching legs. They almost invariably left traces of their existence in their wake, a discarded candy wrapper here, some muddy tracks there - something which inevitably resulted in slow day treks and interminable nights spent barely evading groups of marauding killers. Worst of all, she could tell that the men were beginning to get edgy, reckless, needlessly argumentative - especially the businessman and the elder soldier. Their bickering was oddly reminiscent of eight-year old boys trying to do a teacher's job, except in this case real lives were being endangered by their unwanted aggression.

Truth told, Jenna was scared of what was happening outside the imprisoning ruin that had become her world two months ago. Not simply the city, but beyond. She had little idea what the 'Replicas' were, other than that they were ruthless killers, but understood enough to know that the soldiers knew more than they would trust the civilians about - and the Replicas most certainly didn't come from nowhere!

The problem was that the outside world seemed to have simply forgotten about Fairport. The flattened city was literally walled in, guarded by impenetrable lines of ruthless killers surrounded by the bodies of other unfortunate survivors. Foul play was at work here - Jenna hadn't yet seen any proper evacuation teams, or god forbid, journalists, within the city.

She wondered, idly, if Fairport was even headline news anymore. It was ridiculous that the survivors would simply be left to fend for themselves, helpless against mysterious paramilitary groups willing to kill them; but she feared the possibility that...

_Enough with the conspiracy theories. You need to keep up and stay out of sight._

A crack of gunfire echoed through the hollowed rubble of the unrecognizably barren street, making Jenna's heart sink as she struggled to keep up with the other hiders. She was hoping she'd be free of those horrible harbingers of destruction for at least one day - that at least Leine would stay calm.

Morgan was doing a good job, attentively huddling over the girl and treating their endless ordeal as just a very difficult game. Jenna admired his optimism, his natural aptitude for keeping a child safe and secure, and wondered how much better he would have been in doing her old job. On the other hand, she was sorely tempted to wrench Sally out of Leine's hands and make the girl take a look at the rotting bodies, at the choking fires and crumbled homes and cracked streets. The girl needed to know what was real, or else she'd wind up walking right to her death.

The possibility of bloodshed, hopefully, wasn't soon. The gunfire had dissipated mere minutes ago, leaving the men to squabble amongst themselves about whether to pursue their attacker or not. In her own honest opinion, they could have simply gone around the enemy rather than entangle themselves in yet another painful skirmish; but she wasn't holding a gun.

They moved forward, Jenna's heart suddenly pounding as she realized that they were indeed following the escaping enemy down into the underground. It was probably for the best, since their gunshots had most likely awakened what little life there remained within six blocks of their area, but moving into what used to be the subway tunnels roused a primal fear within her. She feared that whatever was waiting below would turn their new makeshift shelter into a fresh crypt.

She sighed, shakily whistling to herself as she staggered back to the straggling Ivors (the soldiers, like usual, were almost out of sight up ahead, while Natalie and the businessman were quickly pacing behind them), and heard Leine talk about being 'pirates'. She chuckled, despite herself, and mouthed an incredulous "pirates?" to Morgan.

They were beginning to descend what used to be a steep flight of steps now, her worn flats slipping as they skidded over uneven rocks and misplaced bricks. Suddenly, her right foot plunged into a pit deep enough to let the leg be fully extended, and she fell forward with a crack drowned out by a scream. The pained cry had already stopped echoing down the black caverns ahead before Jenna realized what had happened.

"I'm sorry!" she whispered hoarsely, struggling to pull herself out of the pit and straining her wearied spine even further. "It was just an accident." She finally got out, winded as she saw the group tensely ahead of her once more. Leine was staring at her, eyes wide as though she had heard a shot.

_Screaming got to her. I'll remember that._

"Don't worry about me, Leine," she said, massaging her throbbing ankle even as it stuck out from her foot at a sickening angle. "I'm okay...I can get up..."

She irrationally brushed her hands against her sweater before pressing them against the ground, gritting against the awful pain as she tried to bring herself up. Biting her lips, she only managed to lean against the loosely hanging rail of the stairwell as she limped back upright.

_As if I'm not enough of a burden..._

Despite the paralyzing cold that permeated the morning, Jenna's cheeks heated up as Morgan's well-worn arms hoisted her up and tightly wrapped themselves around her waist. She could smell his hot breath against her neck, mingled with his sweat and the ever-present dirt that covered his warm clothes, and shivered.

"We'll catch up," he said, smiling at her despite her foolish delay. She couldn't relax yet, her ears still straining to hear the distorted voices of the soldiers as they were alerted to the sound of a wounded survivor, but nonetheless nodded thankfully at him.

They caught up to Leine, the girl idly skipping blackened stones against the mangled remains of what may have once been a streetlight, and immediately the girl wrapped herself against Morgan's leg like a fresh piece of gum. Noticing Jenna's twisted ankle, she pointed at it and stared at her questioningly.

Jenna sighed despite herself, forcing a weak smile and tenderly letting go of Morgan's shoulder. The pain seemed to shock her entire leg, making her grunt softly as she tried to speak.

"Thanks, Morgan. I'm okay, Leine. We'll just have to watch our step when we look for...treasure, right?" she looked at Morgan, unsure if she was playing along correctly.

The sudden chuckle that blurted out of Morgan's mouth made him cough. He smiled to Jenna and nodded, glancing at the smiling Leine. The little girl giggled and gave the woman before her a shy grin.

"Arr!" she said suddenly and put her stretched fingers to her forehead, saluting the adults. Morgan placed his feet next to each other and straightened his back. He saluted his daughter as well.

"My captain, it seems like our crew has gone treasure hunting without us! We must keep up, don't we, captain?" he asked, winking at Jenna.

Leine turned around and gestured with her hand to follow her. She marched with high knees and a proud smile across her lips. Watching the little girl's gleaming grin as she saluted her father, her pot-bellied doll limply clinging to her side, almost took Jenna's mind off the agonizing numbness that gripped her foot. Almost.

_I'm sorry, Natalie. But I'm going to need more help from you soon.  
><em>  
>Morgan awkwardly cleared his throat, and in an uncharacteristically stilted voice, said "Leine seems to like you." At the sound of this, Jenna's smile faltered subtly. She instantly regretted it - Leine knew what she was thinking, and her bright eyes stared inquisitively into the teacher's.<br>_  
>Leine, you're such a sweet girl. I'd hate to tell you that your father's wrong. I'd hate to have to accept this nightmare over your dream.<em>

She sighed, brushing a scraggly black hair from her forehead and tossing her head back. She attempted an apologetic smile at the Ivors, and Leine only looked up at Morgan, mouth pursed tentatively. Morgan's green eyes said all that was needed: _She'll get better._

"Well, you sure are a smart girl" Jenna said, doing her damnedest to meet the child's eyes with a gaze as strong as her father's. "Now, sweetie, we'll have to go into that tunnel. We'll need to stay with the others, with Miss Natalie and Trevor and the soldiers." She paused. "But it will be dark. Very dark. Quiet, empty and scary."

She looked at Leine, noting that although her smile was rapidly fading her eyes remained as firmly locked upon hers as Morgan's. She was sitting still, listening intently.

_Good. That's a start._

Jenna, with Morgan's help, tenderly sat on her knees and ignored her whinging joints.  
>"Don't worry, kiddo. If you're scared, I won't lie - we are too. Do you understand what I mean?"<p>

There was a slow nod, Leine's eyes still unnervingly fixated on Jenna. She continued.

"We'll do our best to keep you safe. No," she corrected herself. "We WILL keep you safe. But you'll have to be brave, Leine. I know you're a brave girl. Think you can make your father proud?"

She let herself smile again, and found that it came naturally. Leine smiled too, and what a beautiful feeling that gave Jenna. She helped herself up with Morgan's casual strength, and let herself look into his deep eyes again.

"You're a very lucky man, Morgan." She faltered, and looked away, gazing upon the shadowy, sun-streaked streets that had no right to be trashed. "A very good man..."

There was a silence, before she realized that Natalie and Trevor had probably already reached the bottom of the stairs, and she immediately started down the stairwell again. She managed three awkward steps down before slumping on the rail and sliding her way down there.

"Natalie!" she called out, her voice sounding suddenly frail and old. "Please wait...we're coming!"

She held a breath, closing her eyes and listening to her heart. _Thumpthumpthump Thumpthump thump thump._ The pain in her chest would continue for minutes, she knew.

_Oh, come on. I'm not even forty-one, and I must have lost thirty pounds already! I shouldn't be falling apart now..._

Still closing her eyes, she turned her head and whispered. She knew who she'd see when her eyes would open.

"Morgan, can I just share a secret?" She bit her lip, and re-corrected herself. "Leine, can I trust you to protect a secret? Keep it away from any spies?"

She opened her eyes, getting a glimpse of the auburn stubble of Morgan's ungloved hand. She bit her lip as she took the proffered limb and saw Leine's eagerly conspiratorial grin.

"I don't trust them. The men, I mean. Natalie's a sweetheart - remember those sweets she gave you, Leine? But the businessman and the soldiers - they're worrying me."

_The nastier one locked Mr. Fat Cat in the closet for arguing. Should have made him stand in the corner - I could have kept things in there._

"Plus, they know more than we do. They know the names of those soldiers: Replicas." Even now, the names chilled her veins. "They know a lot more, and they're not letting us know about it. So does Trevor - he did work for a weapons manufacturer. You know how Armacham is, right?"

She paused, wanting to say 'I'm fucking scared that he's setting us up' but wouldn't dare letting Leine hear that. Some secrets were private.

"What do you know, Morgan? About...this?" She spread her arms out awkwardly, as though to engulf the entire madness-stricken city. "Actually, all I want to know is if you agree with me. If you trust that I trust you. I trust Leine, after all."

She turned her waist around to look at the blackness, already hearing footsteps climbing up. Time was running out fast for their little conversation, and Jenna dearly hoped that it would only be Natalie coming back up.

"Are you scared, Leine? Don't worry about saying yes - it's very brave for grown-ups to admit that."

_God, why am I still trying to scare her? It'll only hurt her. And Morgan..._

She let out a sigh through her teeth, and idly brushed her arm against Morgan's. It was warm and firm, and she held it as she gazed up at the former mechanic.

_Are you scared, Jenna? Then admit it. It's very brave for grown-ups to do that._

_Oh yes, I'm scared. But cowering is not gonna solve it. We'll do something about that._

"Did you see the blockade, Morgan?" she whispered, voice lowered so that even she couldn't hear herself clearly. "Did you see...anyone there? Anyone who'd help?"

_Anything that'll prove me wrong about being abandoned? Please, I want to be wrong..._

Natalie walked up and, as always, did a superb job of fixing Jenna's foot up. Within minutes, she had diagnosed the problem, thoroughly massaged it, given Jenna time and a cloth to bite into as the foot was painfully put back in place, and then allowed her to walk freely.

"Your ankle's all right," she said, her brow furrowed in concentration. "It's just a sprain. But I'm worried about your knee. I'll need to look at it later. You think you can limp down there?"

_Of course. It's Mrs. Mid-Life Crisis and her dear Arthritis rearing their ugly heads again. To hell with my joints, I'll run a hundred miles if they're going to fall apart now!_

She nodded quietly, and then, with Morgan's help, cautiously got back onto her feet. Natalie's handiwork was immediately appreciated - the foot's swelling still throbbed and her knees trembled nervously, but she could put her weight on it without grimacing. She flashed a thumbs-up to Natalie, then to Leine who returned the gesture with the wrong finger.

Without another word, they started down the black stairwell again. Morgan led the way, one arm gripping the wobbling rail and the other pressed firmly against Jenna's back, while a nervous Leine was escorted by Natalie and a seemingly reluctant Engstrom.

Even though she wasn't willing to fall into another hole, Jenna tried to hurry up, fearful of those faceless soldiers popping out of the darkness and mowing them down. They always did that, eventually - they owned the city and hunted down anyone who'd dare to attack them.

But it was another minute of slow, blind descent through stale and pungent air, punctuated by the heavy breathing of the group and the hollow footsteps of their feet colliding against broken mortar, tiles and glass, before Jenna had the courage to whisper to Morgan.

_There's a reason he's let go of her for now._

"Morgan, are you with me? Don't you think we all have a right to not have secrets?"

She paused, hearing Leine squeal and then gasp in horror as she accidentally crushed the bones of a dead rat, and wondered idly whether Natalie and the businessman were on the same line.

_Please, don't hear that, Leine. Don't hear that..._

Jenna wasn't surprised to find the bullish Hendershot would be persistent in his wild goose chase. It took an hour of being dragged through the dark, rotting underground metro area, accompanied only by the sounds of their echoing footsteps and the occasional pitter-patter of (hopefully) rats rustling through festering discarded foodstuffs, before the commander finally saw fit to stop.

Although she had wanted to share a private chat with Morgan, it turned out that trying to navigate the perilously uneven cracks, pits and cave-ins that disfigured the subway took up all her energy. Leine was a brave girl, but it wasn't very long before Jenna realized the restrained winces of pain and short breath weren't simply coming from her. Morgan clearly seemed troubled at this and Jenna had urged him to stay back for his daughter or demand the commander to let them rest, but he simply refused to leave her alone.

After a seemingly interminable period of twisting turns, periodical descents into deeper, more suffocatingly airless levels, they finally arrived at a rather old subway line Jenna couldn't recognize. The platform was dustier than usual, but what struck her were the skeletal, burnt husks of several disconnected pairs of train cars that lay within the tunnels, waiting for a departure that will never come.

It was around the fourth level of Lange Station that Suleman finally asked his boss a question. "Hendershot, when are you going to admit that we've lost the soldier, and let us sit down?"

"When pigs fly," Natalie murmured to my side, leaning on a broken vending machine. Morgan chortled, and held me tighter.

"Right now, that Re– _soldier_ is on his way to the rest of his unit, and when he finds his friends, he's going to bring a storm of hell down on our heads. Do you want that to happen, Suleman?" Hendershot's voice was like the calm before a storm.

"It's been over an hour. It's not going to happen. And in case you've forgotten," Suleman added, measuring the irritation in his voice carefully. "Not all of us are commandoes."

"Always the kid! Always the fucking leech and the kid! " Hendershot suddenly shouted, punching the air around his waist in frustration. He drew in close to Suleman and raised a forefinger threateningly in his face. "I don't give a fuck if she walks, I don't give a shit if the old lady limps - we are going to find that soldier."

"Jesus Christ!" Suleman returned, pushing Hendershot's hand out of his face. "What's gotten into you? You're scaring me, Hendershot."

"Scared? Scared?" Hendershot shrieked. "Are you a man, or a fucking MOUSE?! You will listen to me, and you will listen well... I... I oughta court-martial you."

"If you continue to threaten all of our lives by acting like this, you won't get the chance."

"Fine," said Hendershot, in a resigned manner. "Fine, Suleman. You win. We'll rest."

By this point, the pain had numbed and now Jenna was just drowsy - she was hungry, she was scared, and worst of all she didn't know when to stop. Thankfully, Leine had suddenly squirmed out of Natalie and Trevor's grasp and with a burst of youthful speed, grabbed her father's hand, pulling him and the teacher into the closest open subway car they could find.

Yes, she thought as she slumped against a soft bench in the darkest corner of the car and gave a weak thanks to Morgan, she'd talk to him later. After she took a quick nap for an energy shot. Just ten minutes...

-When her eyes snapped open, blackness filled her vision. Her heart seemed to have taken a high-dive and she barely bit back an instinctive cry. She waited, trying to adjust her eyes to the light, and found that there seemed to be almost no lights anywhere.

_Is it night already? Jesus, how long was I out?_

As she continued to test her patience, she tried to move her arms and found that one was lying upon a small, warm body. She could feel the soft thumping of Leine's heart against the girl's chest, and slowly raised her arm off. The girl rustled unconsciously, rolling onto a dark form that could only be Morgan.

Jenna tried to raise herself straight, recognizing the snores of the people nearby. The soft gasp-like breathing of Leine, the rhythmic snoring of Morgan as his head lolled slowly back and forth, the-

Wait, she could only count four voices, not including her own. She strained her eyes to the light that was softly emanating from the gaping windows on the left, seeing Natalie's face sitting across from them in a rare state of relaxation. She narrowed her eyes and rubbed them – it was dark and without her glasses it was impossible to focus, but simply staring out the windows physically hurt.

The air outside shimmered like a 110-degree day, and as she blinked a shadow enveloped the windows. She would have screamed had she instead attempted to duck and slammed herself against the floor, causing a hollow thud just as the shadow faded.

If it had been intruders, the sound would have brought about their doom by now. As it was, all she knew was that Hendershot was the only man sleeping in the other car.

_Where's his lieutenant? Or Engstrom?_

Pain forgotten in favor of embarassment, she tried to roll onto her back, and suddenly saw Leine's curious eyes peering into hers intently. The girl was clearly startled but hadn't cried out and awakened Morgan. That would have been embarassing.

_Clever girl._

"I'm sorry, Leine...I just...fell off, that's all. Go back to sleep."

Leine nodded and stood up. Jenna tried to push off against the ground, only for a rough hand to grasp hers and help her up. She was glad it wasn't bright enough for Morgan to see her flushed face.

"Morgan, where's Suleman and Engstrom? Are they on watch? Because..." she paused, and then shrugged. "I saw something pass by the window just now and only Hendershot's sleeping in the other car."


	14. Necrovoir

**NECROVOIR**

The sink overflows, yet I still hear their screams. His screams. I hate this so much. I should do so much better – mom needs me to, because dad's not coming back. She tried to get him back, but it only made my dreams worse. She doesn't care. She says she's been through worse.

I look at myself through my fingers, trying and failing to keep my eyes off the slit-throat woman whose fingers caress my throat. Come on, weakling. Get out there! Only another five hours of practice before going home to get ash shoved down my throat and have the cycle start all over again.

So what if everyone needs me to keep smiling? So what if I keep seeing lives ending in pain and no one will believe me? So what if almost everyone around me is guilty and so am I? What am I, a queen? I'm nothing. Mom's an angel for giving me another chance.

The door opens, and the new girl comes in. Farah's shocked, but I'm more so. The dead woman's cold blood is now slithering down my shoulders and I don't care. One of the living has seen me quivering. So what should I do to her?

I smile, rub my eyes, beckon to her. No one will believe her. Maybe she'll listen to me.

* * *

><p><p>

She fled through a shattered window, escaping the roars of the flaming mansion with the Penetrator in her hands. Her eyes screamed with anguish. At least she wasn't dead. Those men didn't need to die, but she certainly didn't need to feel anything about them. They'd chosen their fate.

But she hadn't chosen theirs, and that made her shiver under the blanket of sweat that smothered her mask and jacket. It was wrong. And she was at fault. She'd left herself open. That simply could not do.

_That immature brat. I didn't want to break the charade yet. It's not funny._

She had to be quick. Beyond the inferno lay a void darker than black, and she had no intention of venturing unprotected. She opened her backpack, wrestled the trembling jar of ashes out of her bag, and lifted its lid off by just a crack. She gulped in a mouthful of warm filtered air, then removed her mask and blindly placed her lips against the miniscule gap.

It felt like fat slugs were suckling her gums and burning her throat, but she managed to swallow and attach the mask. Returning the jar to its rightful place, she opened her eyes.

_Careful now. Can't use too much, or I'll have to start all over again._

Strange colors stabbed her sight. The blackness eroded, melting into an ocean of impossible shapes and destructively chaotic patterns. The world outside was a desiccated graveyard, but there were brutish outlines loping towards her. Scavengers.

The cloud towered over all, an eager mouth devouring everything caught within its tendrils. For a moment, she let doubt rear its head. That girl had wanted her to head right into the maelstrom, and every reason seemed worse than the last.

"She is afraid for all the right reasons, my dear." The old bastard's voice pierced her ears and she smiled ever so slightly. "She cannot destroy what she fears, not truly. It must be locked away, it must be-"

She slapped her forehead and followed the narrow black trail that danced before her. If she guessed right, heading there would shut all the voices up.

* * *

><p><p>

I've never had a sister, but Farah can pass for one. She's become almost as beautiful as me, almost as clever, almost as strong. I brought her to that level and I've made sure she stays that way. It makes me feel better about myself.

She can't see the dead people who whisper to me, but she says she understands. I can almost forgive that ignorance. I've known her for almost ten years now, and she's turning fifteen today. There was a time where kids would point and laugh at her for crying, for opening her mouth, for daring to have a dad who hits her. Now they all want time alone with her. It's always fun to turn them down.

My phone rings, and I hear her voice. Soft and warm as always, she tells me that she's at Tom's house and I'm welcome to join them when I finish my second shift. I hesitate just a little before saying yes.

I don't like Tom and his friends – though I can't tell her as much. It's because of him that I barely see her these days. He's older than us, and spends most of his hours chopping up animals that other people killed. And that smile of his. It's too wide.

I can pull off that look much better than he can.

* * *

><p><p>

The path gave way at what must have been a theater months ago. Now the roof was collapsed, exposing the debris-laden floor to a starless sky inundated with ash. Where the walls still stood, a scarlet smorgasbord of rust and ichor came into sharp relief. Pinning herself against a fallen column, she struggled to see if any genuine life lingered there.

There was plenty of death to go around. Crushed under fallen seats, flayed remains splayed atop rubble, mountains of broken bodies were scattered across the vast arena. A collective moan came from eternally suffocating mouths. The stench alone cut through her mask and gave her gasps of air a bloody taste. Many a man or woman had been taken apart piecemeal, reduced to mere ribbons of sinew and bone, and then reassembled into patchwork figures seated upon the collapsed decks. Yet no carnivore - no bird, rat or maggot - was present to hasten the decay of the bloated corpses.

Nearly fifty human beings lay imprisoned in their unliving bodies, forced to watch the lone woman on the stage.

_A puppet without strings._

She was a ghastly off-white figure in the tattered remains of a bloody leotard, and she writhed like a malfunctioning machine. Her face was too symmetrical, her eyes were too wide, and her smile spread past her cheeks. Her sobs echoed across the air, rising above the moan of the dead.

**_"Allegro, no, not that, was it adagio? Please, get it right! I have to! Can't get it wrong!"_**

Like a broken record, she muttered it over and over. The sound hurt more than the clack of bloody, broken feet pounding against the floor for the hundred-thousandth time. Soon the pale woman's voice became her own, and her lips began moving. Her feet stumbled across the gore-laden floor, compelled by another's will.

_No, no, no, not like this! Damn it, no! She's watching!_

She'd seen a few of these walking wretches before. Knew enough not to take them on. Looked like mere victims, with bodies melted like wax figurines. They were always surrounded by death. On her first day in the city, she'd seen a kid sobbing over a pair of headless adults. There had been a maid sweeping the floor, crying as she struggled to sweep bodies out of her house. There'd been a couple of suicidal ones – a torso-girl who left a slug-trail of blood up thirty flights of stairs to fall and smash herself upon the pavement, and a man with six bullet holes in his skull. Anyone who tried to communicate with them only ended up worse than dead – rotting bodies forced to dance and kill for their mistress' capriciousness.

She couldn't stand looking at that woman. She was so young, almost a teen, and her red hair shone like fire. She tried to at least close her eyes as her legs were forced up the steps of the stage. How dare that woman look so familiar! She hissed through pursed lips, knowing that Alma was getting a laugh from all of this.

She stood upon the stage with the dancer, who stopped in the middle of a pirouette and wheeled around perfectly to grin at her. She had hundreds of teeth, and the hands she stuck out were drenched in fresh blood. Within her bag, the ash jar kicked and rattled.

_No._

**_"Please, no more solo! I'm sick of being solo! I don't want to be solo!"_**

_I'm sorry, kid. None of us want to._

**_"Please, Anna…"_**

Hearing the name was enough to make her dive upon the freak pretending to be Farah. The facade disappeared, warped beauty sloughed off to reveal an emaciated skeleton with red hair. A scream to end all screams rocked across the air.

_Of course! She needs to sing too!_

Her ears burst with an incessant ringing, her eyes flooded over with blood, and the pain. Oh, the pain! It ate away at her heart, her innards fizzling as though drowned in acid, her skin covered with a hellish rash, her nerves pulsed like electrified barbed wire, and her orifices seemed to plug shut. Faintly, she saw the horde of undead bodies shuffling towards the stage, before the dancer's skull enveloped her gaze.

* * *

><p><p>

Farah's gone. I haven't seen her for weeks.

It's not like I haven't looked for her. I got to Tom's house, but neither he nor she was there. I went to her father's house. He shut the door in my face. Asked the police – they nodded and pushed me out, putting up a couple of posters on telephone wires. They only lasted a day before homeless people recycled it. Asked Helena and Ruth to spread the word, but neither of them got back to me.

Tom came back a few days ago. He shrugs, dodges the question, and tries to ask if I have any time alone with him. Slimy bastard. What can I do about him?

I can't tell my teachers why I can't focus on studying, because it's my problem. Can't tell coach why I'm not at practice, because it's my problem.

I made a stupid mistake, though. Yesterday, customers heard crying from upstairs and they ran away before mom could get paid. She didn't just lock me in the shrine this time. She also taped a sock full of human remains in my mouth. I still can't talk.

I hate her. I really do.

All my life I've seen people killing each other, and I want to know why. Why doesn't death frighten them? Is it fun?

Would killing make the pain stop?

* * *

><p><p>

Fingers pried at her, pulling at her legs and gnawing on her hands. She struggled viciously against dead flesh, the meat-puppets unable to register pain as her knife sliced apart their hands. As she crawled out from the grasp of a suited man with a stake rammed through both eyes, blood leaked out from her eyes and smeared a thick layer through her mask.

_Can't shoot them all, can't even shoot their heads, can't even shoot!_

She removed it instinctively, not caring if she'd suffocate in the dead air. It'd be much better than having her guts torn out and eaten as she watched. Her lungs ached and she fingered through her bag, scrabbling for the ash jar.

_Don't be too crazy, can't use everything._

The skeletal woman lumbered across the stage like a gorilla, a hydra-like mass of red tendrils extending themselves into the skulls of the screaming horde. Clutching their skulls , they echoed the victim's own thoughts.

**_"Go away, GO AWAY, GO AWAY!"_**

The jar popped out of her bag as though the ashes had come alive, and the lid flew off with a pop.

_No!_

Like a swarm of flies, the black particles gathered about into a hideously thick cloud with an angry hiss. The dancer reared her head back and howled once more, the shockwave dispersing the ashes all over the theater. Some landed upon her, some landed upon the mercenary, and a little fell upon the corpses.

The meat-puppets fell back into the disorganized jigsaw puzzle of limbs and heads they'd started as, while the undead woman shrieked as her skin bubbled and burst. A fresh wave of anger engulfed the mercenary, and as she breathed in the painful ashes her muscles pulsed with a new energy.

She pounced upon the smaller woman, pinning her down easily, and began to stab and slice her apart.

* * *

><p><p>

Farah's dead. Tom killed her.

No one will believe that Farah told me this.

I went to the butcher shop last night. Lied to mom, said I was at work at McDonald's – actually got Reyes there to cover for me.

Like in my dreams, it was in the basement. Tom had found her diary, and he wasn't happy about what she said. His five friends were there too. He was disgusted, they were just amused.

They violated her, over and over. When they got bored, Tom cut her throat and let her bleed out. They cut her to pieces and threw them into the grinder.

I heard her gurgling inside the grinder. She came out, in many pieces, and struggled towards me. I let her grab my eyes.

I felt what Tom did to her. He'd violated _me_.

And I felt what she thought about. I wish I hadn't. She'd _loved_ me.

Tom hadn't wanted that. So he and his worthless thugs had stolen her away from me.

How dare they.

They took her life away like it was nothing. It's only fair that I take theirs.

* * *

><p><p>

She sat upon the lifeless corpse, its eyes sliced apart by her knife. A few bits of torso still kept writhing, but neither arm nor leg nor head remained intact enough to resemble anything human.

_Happy now, Alma? You sick little worthless freak, have you had enough?_

She got up, wheezing through burned lungs, and wiped the blood off the eyeholes before putting on her mask. She lit the bloated corpse with her lighter, the stench of cooked meat straining her nostrils, and scooped up the still flaming fragments into her jar.

_The jar is half-full. It's not half-empty._

The screams had toppled the last remnants of the building, revealing ashen canyons and plateaus of molten rock and collapsed masonry. The epicenter was mere blocks away. Surrounded by the dead again, she continued further towards oblivion.


	15. Jenna Mailer: Sepsis

It's time for breakfast. Like that makes any difference in this perpetual twilight, buried under tons of concrete and steel. Our clocks have been dead since the blast, and it's only my diary that reminds me that it's only been sixty-three or so days.

It hasn't taken long to get used to eating from the dirt. The men have gone ahead into the forward cart, Morgan taking Leine with him. We're sandwiched between two subway carts, both adjacent to stations facing each other. I think we are, anyway. It's pitch black outside, and even the rechargeable flashlight taped to my breast barely lets me see past my hands.

Thankfully, Nat and I've built a makeshift fire from the tattered sports section of the Fairport Tribune. Anything larger and we'll have Hendershot pointing a gun at us for 'leaving a snail trail'. Tough luck.

We need to keep things warm more than we need pneumonia or salmonella. Food's an issue – the soldiers have access to the cans and can openers, leaving us to improvise with our own rations. No forks or spoons now, no plates, no more chips or beans or vegetables. Only a handful of Tupperware boxes, a bowl that's barely been cleaned, and six half-filled, tepid water bottles for us.

Today, it's Nat's turn to trap food. After all, Leine deserves more than just a gulp of 'stew' in her little belly once a day.

Natalie arrives from the opposite cart, dangling something dripping behind her. Her smile is ghoulish in this light. "I got a surprise, Jen, and you're gonna love it."

"A rat?" I ask, taking out my knife to skin the incoming meal.

She giggles nervously, and then reveals today's catch. I freeze for a moment as I stare at the dead eyes of a ghastly pink four-legged figure. Its head flopped around on a crushed neck, and a few wisps of dirty hair clung to its rancid body.

I shake my head. "It's fresh, right?"

Natalie takes a moment to answer. She's told me before about the two Russian Blues that lived in her apartment on 15th Townsend Avenue. "Yeah, he didn't even try to run away."

"Poor bastard. Probably gave up."

"I hope so," Nat says, pushing an auburn strand out of her eyes and crouching down beside me. "What's the alternative?"

I'm no cat lady – damn things piss on your bed and make your eyes puffy – but that doesn't mean I love killing them. Engstrom may sit around and blabber all his nonsense about the beauty of harkening back to our natural form as hunter-gatherers; he doesn't have to smash in a squeaking rat's face. He doesn't need to do anything but sit and complain about how women still can't cook.

"Come on, then," I tell her. "Let's make a stew." There are times when I'd allow Leine to help out. This isn't one of them. The girl loves anything that's got fur on it.

As Natalie hangs the bowl over the smoldering fire, I set the animal down on a mass of tattered magazine paper. Holding my breath, I cut in through the anus – that's the softest part. I've sawed up enough animals from snout to crotch that I no longer look away.

After wiping off all the fur, pus and blood on my knife, I then dig into the animal's chest with both hands. I pull it apart, revealing the sickly reddish pulp beneath that once served as organs. I saw through the innards, taking the heart, stomach, liver and lungs of the cat and whatever sinew remains tethered to its broken skeleton, and plop them down into the bubbling water of the bowl. I wrap the stripped remains of the cat in soaked newspaper, then toss it out an open window and into the darkness. Let other scavengers take the leftovers.

"If only my sister could see me," Natalie sighs, pulling her jeans jacket tighter around herself. "She'd always dreamed about the 'end days'."

Not this again. "Don't even start, Nat…"

"Come on, Jen! We'll get through this alive. Can't I just talk about it?"

I close my eyes, and say, "We can't get distracted."

"Well," she paused, "you've still got family out there too, haven't you?"

"Yes. A sister in Japan."

"Married to a cute engineer!"

"Maybe I'll call her up when we get out." I smile, still keeping my eyes shut. "We'll take a jet there. First-class, of course."

"Hmm…first thing I'm gonna do is take a warm shower…" she says.

"I'll buy a whole box of chocolate cakes. Get fat again." We both laugh. My stomach rumbles, and my mouth salivates as if though sweetness had pleasured it at long last.

"I want cake too," a soft little voice emerges. My heart skips, and I open my eyes to see Leine sitting cross-legged beside me. She could certainly do with some fattening.

"Hey, Leine, ya want some soup? It's nice and warm today." Natalie scoops a box into the cat stew and hands it to the girl's tiny hands. She sniffs, then a thin smile spreads across her lips and she starts sipping the soup. "Thank you," she murmurs. I'm so glad she didn't ask how we made it.

"Miss Jenna," she taps me on the knee, wiping red off her chin. "Sally was talking about you."

"Oh really," I smile, suppressing an eye-roll.

"Yeah…she doesn't like you. She thinks you're scary."

Well. I hadn't expected that.

"That's not very nice! Tell the little rabbit that Nat and I love you just as much as daddy."

"I did, but…but…" she closed her eyes, and then turned her head away. Good lord, what kind of nightmare did she have?

"You okay, Leine?"

"I...she said I shouldn't tell daddy about this, because then she'd…" she stuttered, and then began rubbing her eyes. Nat's wide eyes mirrored my own – it wasn't like her to talk this way. Gently, I wrapped an arm around her back and pulled her into my chest.

"It's just a dream, Leine," I whispered. God knows I've avoided way more sleep than humanly possible just to avoid those infernal nightmares. "We'll look after you, I swear."

"She wants to…play a game without the grown-ups…she says there are other girls…" she stared up, her aqua-blue eyes reddened with tears. "But she didn't want you there…it was a bad game…Miss Nat and you got hurt-"

"Sweetie, did the ladies make something delicious today?" Morgan had stepped inside, a lead pipe in one hand and Leine's wretched old doll in the other. Leine straightened up, and then nodded like a bobble-head.

"Hey, Morgan, where the heck"- Natalie checked herself, "are we going?"

"Not sure." Morgan shrugs. "Suleman wants to get out of the tunnels ASAP, but the big guy's not listenin' and the suit's sayin' we can get to Transit Authority from here."

"That's about ten stations from here," I say, "which would mean at least a full day of trekking. Assuming we don't run into anything." We sure as hell weren't the first people to get lost down here.

"Well, I like to start my mornings with a walk," Natalie says, handing a box of soup to Morgan and striding over to our supply bag. "Let's hurry up."

Morgan sits down beside me, reaching a hand out to tousle his daughter's hair. He leans in. His lips nearly touch my ears. I smell his breath, and his reddish beard tickles my cheek.

"Is she alright?" he whispers.

"She didn't talk to you?"

"She doesn't say much now," he smiles gently. "But she was a real chatterbox back then. I guess I'm just glad she still has me…"

"I'm glad too," I smile, placing my dark hand against his fair palm. "There aren't enough kids these days…"

I see Engstrom walking in, with that piggish smile on his lips. He's carrying an empty can with him. We straighten up. "Isn't that just adorable?" he says, then tosses the can out. The clang echoes throughout the empty hall. "Come on, we've got five minutes to get our butts moving."

Before we march off to our doom, I must first do something about my sprained ankle. I'm going to be walking on it for the next dozen hours, after all. While Natalie is busy packing away our rations, I head over to the taped-together mass of duffel bags that hold our supplies. Swiftly, I pull out Natalie's red paramedic kit and open it. We haven't got much left – only a couple of bandage rolls and gauze pads, a nearly deplenished pack of tape, a tiny scalpel, an alcohol bottle and a small pack of painkillers. I glance around before pinching just one pill and swallowing it without water.

No harm, no foul.

I replace the first-aid kit, then sling the bag strap over my shoulder and walk towards the exit. Natalie smiles before pulling on her own backpack.

* * *

><p>Then it's off into the darkness.<p>

Hendershot allows only two flashlights for the whole group, which boils down to the men carrying them while he and his subordinate gets to walk ahead with their fancy night-vision goggles. Naturally, I walk alongside Morgan and Leine while Natalie stays close to Engstrom.

I'm trembling way too much for comfort, and my right hand has a death-grip on Leine's slim fingers. I tap my walking stick, made from brick chunks and wood splinters taped against a steel bar, on the floor and against the unseen wall to my left. I don't want to fall into another hole.

I can't see a damned thing except for blackness, and the air's increasingly smothering my face like a pillow. It's cold as death, and the stench numbs my nose. The silence hangs cruelly over us, allowing our footsteps to pitter-patter for what must be miles, and Leine's soft voice is of little comfort.

"Daddy?"

"What, love?" Morgan murmurs. I can hardly see his face above the flashlight beam.

"Won't the bad guys see our lights?"

I tighten my grip on her hand.

"They're too scared to come down here," he replies. "And besides, you've still got me." I squint, barely making out the silhouettes of Engstrom and Natalie slowly climbing over a pile of rubble.

Silence. I keep tapping my stick, and keep shifting weight off my right foot. Clang. Clang. Clang.

"In my dream," Leine continued, "They follow the lights."

"Hush now," I whispered. "The soldiers will make sure we're safe."

"I don't feel safe with them."

"You've got us." Morgan says, turning his head and winking to me.

"That's true…" Leine trails off. After a moment, she rests her tiny head against my side. We continue on like this, our feet cracking and squelching against the invisible floor. Irrational thoughts gnaw at my mind like plagued rats, and I can hear my heart between my ears. The darkness, amazingly, weighs even heavier on my eyes.

It's almost a relief when we see light again. The narrow mouth of the tunnel has become ridiculously tighter, enclosing around a pale yellow light flickering from the back of a train car surrounded by rubble.

Something's wrong, though. Natalie's glaring at the soldiers with her hands on her hips, while Engstrom is bent over in the corner, a puddle beneath his face. I can smell it even before I hear what they're harshly whispering about.

"There is no discussion! You can cover the kid's eyes if you have to – otherwise we'll just leave her here!" Hendershot snarls.

"What's going on?" Morgan asks, ice in his voice.

In the pale yellow light, Hendershot wipes his forehead with his black-gloved hands. Suleman cuts the silence. "There are bodies in there. A whole lot of them."

Leine's eyes are wide, but at least she's not hiding behind our legs.

"Oh my…" Morgan trails off, looking at me with wide fear.

"Look, the only way out is through. I'm not happy about it either." And with that, Hendershot stepped forward, wrenched open the door, and climbed aboard. The smell of rot and blood hit me, and I fight to resist the wad of bile from leaving my throat. I'd smelled the stench of many a corpse before, but never in such great a concentration.

"Let's…let's just get it over with," Natalie whispers, climbing up. She turns back to offer me a hand, and I accept it - but not before tying my headscarf over my nose and mouth. Closing my eyes to avoid tearing, I blindly follow her footsteps across the metal floor.

It's not long before I trip over a soft body and fall right atop a smashed-in face. I scream, but only a choked gasp emerges. I'm absolutely surrounded by death. Piles upon piles of mutilated bodies, splayed in a macabre labyrinth throughout the length of the metal tunnel. The sickly yellow tunnel barely lights the way through the subway car, and without another word I stumble ahead. I can't see where anyone else is.

Groping around for my glasses, I feel the severed head of a blonde woman. A pair of eyes hangs from the rafters, caked with dried blood. An old man's broken body is crushed beneath a pile of suitcases, most of his head having been smashed off by the bullets ringing his throat. A bare pink chest lies atop a wall of bodies, the entrails hanging from pole to pole like a party decoration. Legs and hands roll across the room. Dead men, dead women, dead children, black and white and brown and yellow, all united in decay.

The 'fresher' ones are closest to me, and they've got the most flesh left. The others were little more than bone, torn and shorn apart. Who'd killed them? The "Replicas"? Bandits? Animals?!

I hear a pattering above me, and freeze. My glasses are hanging from a rusted grate. They certainly hadn't fallen that way.

I tighten my grip on my steel stick, and as I grab my glasses the strained metal ceiling screams and a stack of rotten bones fall atop me.

Something white and large leaps across the black gap, hissing and scraping across the train top. It was joined by another body, and then another crawler, and another. A chorus of scratches and clicks echo through the metal walls, and the bodies themselves tremble from the weight of the intruders.

"Help!" I scream. "Oh god, help!"

A hideous shriek erupts, and is cut off by a splash. It's in the car ahead. Stumbling to my feet, barely clinging onto my glasses, I leap over a decapitated body and see Suleman hunched over what was once Hendershot.

His face looks like it's been stuffed into a blender and a fountain of blood slowly sprayed out from what little remained of his savaged throat. His eyes lie smashed He writhes in a lake of spreading crimson, arms stretched out in a diver's pose, and lets out one last gurgled moan before falling silent.

"You didn't see it?" Suleman whispers, pulling me to the corner. I shake my head, try to breathe slowly. Out of my right eye I see an upside down skull peering into the window behind him, and I blink. It grins. It's gone before I can point at it.

Suleman does a full turn before the pounding of metal resumes. He nearly unloads his clip on Morgan, who's resorted to carrying Leine on his back.

"Where are-" he manages to say before a pair of screams ring across the corridor. One of them is higher-pitched.

"Natalie!" Suleman yells, tearing through the train car. I follow, my head spinning, eyes focused on all the broken windows around us. My feet hurt, and I'm hardly aware of Leine crying behind me. We sprint through car after car, harried by shadows passing over us.

As we continue on, the train slopes ever so slightly into a blackish sea of muck. My boots squelch against the septic mess, and a new wave of nausea overcomes my stomach. As we reach the final car, we open the door to discover almost the entire vehicle had smashed through the concrete walls and into an utterly massive cavern lit from below by an eerie green glow. A tiny green web of catwalks hovers precariously over a maze of pipes, while a tepid brown sea bubbled only a few feet below.

Well, shit. We're in the sewers now.

Suleman approaches the gaping end of the car first, rifle held out in front of him. After a moment, he signals us over and gestures over to the ladder on the far side of the catwalk.

"See that ladder? Surface access. We gotta get there."

"What about Natalie and Engstrom?" Morgan asks, Leine stiffly clinging to his neck. I can't tell if she's fainted or just gone into shock.

"We'll just have to hope they're up ahead…" Suleman sighs before he walks ahead of us.

We get halfway across the catwalk when Morgan flashed a light across the pipes above us. That's when the crawlers pounce.

Suleman's rifle roars in the silence, cutting one or two of the figures into ribbons. It doesn't matter – they engulf him, chattering gibberish and digging into him with skeletal claws. "No!" he screams as he loses balance and smashes into the toxic water beneath. Neither he nor the cannibals rise.

This is the point where we run. Holding onto my steel pipe and ignoring the pain in my ankle, I tear ahead, the ladder not seeming to get any closer. God damn it, I want to get out of here! I'd rather be back up there!

When at long last I wrap my hands on the ladder, the rungs break off.

I scream my lungs out and smash the railing with the stick, not caring how much it hurts. I am NOT going to die like this! Leine will NOT have her life snuffed out at the jaws of these freaks.

Metal screeches behind me, and the anger evaporates. Oh lord.

One of the crawlers is hunched inquisitively atop the opposite railing, and it's hissing. I barely notice its missing eyes, its face scarred with tooth-marks, its body devoid of skin and musculature. It's a miserable, naked, necrotic bag of twisted bone, and like a tortured spider it skitters towards me.

I lash out as the morlock pounces. The pipe connects and then the creature is on me. Hot saliva, laced with red phlegm, smears my face. Eyes closed, I pound on its gnashing face.

My back smashes against the gap from which the mutant entered, and then I'm freefalling through the cold air. Leine's cries echo across the cavern.

I don't even have time to yell before thick sludge closes over my head. I thrash blindly, eyes burning and nose clogged up. I don't even want to know what's in there with me. I am tossed like flotsam across the mixture of toxic feces and decaying meat, and as I break the surface to take in a gasp of rotten air a claw forces me down again. My glasses are gone, casualties of the sludge.

I like swimming, but only in chlorinated waters. Here the sewage forces its way through my sealed lips and down my throat. My heavy clothes only serve to drag me down. Spidery fingers pull at me and I kick in vain, only smashing my legs against the metal walls. I wrap my arms around a gushing pipe, shaking my sodden curls out of my eyes, and hug it dearly. My ears ring and the roar of the water overwhelms all else. It begs me to follow it, to join the other bodies mangled and torn beneath its surface.

Fuck that.

I open my eyes; try to gaze above at the blinding lights. I can't see a damned thing. Then something gnaws at my legs, pierces my stockings. With a mad cry, I shake off the carnivore and wrap my hands around the sewage pipe above me. My fingernails crack, unable to gather traction on the slimy walls, but I pull myself up and gasp for air.

The clicking and scraping returns, louder than ever, and I struggle back up. I don't know where Morgan and Leine are now, but I won't find them down here with these things. The tunnel is lightless and littered with fragments that stink and crack beneath my boots. I shiver and hug myself – my cardigan and blouse soaked through, my dripping skirt clinging to my knees, my boots slipping on the muck. I half-run, half-drag my right foot across the rancid passage, enveloped by the laughs and snarls of the cannibals.

I trip and pain jets up my left jaw. I struggle to my feet, ears ringing, and then suddenly flip over as the pipe slopes downwards. The fall grows ever steeper, ever faster, and finally I am launched into a reddish hill of entrails. At least my arms broke the fall this time.

Winded, I lie there, gulping in noxious mouthfuls. Only my screaming heart reminds me that I'm still alive. My eyes flicker from corner to corner, drinking in the feverish red light.

It's deathly quiet here, and the cavern I'm in is pockmarked with jagged rocks and putrid brown growths. Mixing in with the sound of dripping water is a churning moan, pulsing like a disembodied heartbeat. That certainly wasn't man-made. I push myself from the writhing pile of half-eaten intestines, caked with waste and pus, and squint against the harsh glow emanating within the cavern's heart.

I hardly notice my crotch getting warmer.

A figure swathed in crimson-dyed cloth looms over dozens of those pale morlocks, swaying and humming obliviously. Countless arms hangs from its side, stitched together by haphazard glass shards piercing dead skin. A grisly curtain of black hair conceals its multi-eyed face. Over ten feet tall, this Frankenstein's monster hums and beckons to the worm-like morlocks, who dropped from the ceilings and rose from the sludge to bow and whine before the abomination's mutilated feet. A red glow emanates from its chest, pulsing and churning.

Crucified to its belly is Natalie, pale and bloody. Her head lolls limply, and two rusted knives pin her hands to the creature's legs. Bone and sinew jut out from her right elbow, and her bag lies gutted across the floor.

I can't just leave her to die here.

I dart my gaze across the cave, struggling to find something useful and only finding more nightmares. The walls are drenched in inane murals, depicting stick-figures engaged in mutilation and cartoonish figures of large-bellied women. Blood, glistening black and creamy in texture, forms inane words around the cavern. Hundreds of primitive art depict the same figure – gigantic and long-haired, a thin queen in scarlet.

**OUR MOTHER WHO ART IN HELL PLEASE SAVE US PROTECT US FEED US PLEASE **

These morlocks may have killed many people to make the hellish mannequin holding Natalie, but a myriad others float across the water. Black worms suck off what little flesh remains on their smashed bones. A glinting pile alerts me, and I almost whoop with delight.

It's a pile of gleaming cylinders and bottles with soaked rags in them. Seems like the creatures were hanging onto any shiny thing they could find, explosive or not. I breast-stroke there, hearing the hum of the 'Mother' grow ever louder. It is when I arrive at the pile that an ear-splitting howl makes the cavern itself rumble. Two tons of rock chunks nearly flatten my leg as I pull myself onto the pile.

I hear the skittering sounds of the crawlers heading towards me. Not much time left. I sift my hands through the pile, ignoring my screaming heart. Damn it, where is it?

Finally my hands grasp around a lighter – and the hairy, purplish hand hanging onto it. I wrench the body-part off, flick the lighter on, and cackle as a yellow flame comes to life. Picking up a bottle of Johnnie Walker, I light the rag stuffed into it and then toss the flaming grenade into the water.

A wall of fire erupts across the water, and the burning crawlers look positively demonic as they scream and succumb to the flames. I toss another bottle, and another bottle, and another bottle, until the pile is empty. Sweat pours down my sweltering face and I cover my mouth with my collar. I don't plan on suffocating here, after all. I close my eyes and stride through a gap in the flame walls. Good thing my clothes are so clingy right now. I don't want to burn those. I stare at the giant patchwork corpse, and to my surprise its red glow has been snuffed out.

By the time I step towards Natalie, the mannequin has fallen completely apart and she slumps to the ground, knives still nailing her palms to a rotten torso. The three morlocks surrounding her suddenly rear back. They either roar or try to speak a tongueless form of English, and suddenly skitter off into the shadows.

"That's right," I yell, trying to keep my voice steady. "Get outta here, cowards!"

"Jen…" Natalie slurs. They must have smashed her jaw. "Arms…hurt…"

"I know," I fumble through the first-aid kit. At least the things didn't steal the painkillers.

"Here," I pour them down her throat. "Sorry about this."

I'm crying as I pull the knives out of her hands. She screams more than loud enough for the two of us. Her arms loosely hang to her sides – her fingers twitching uselessly – and I hastily pour alcohol and wrap bandages around both palms. Good thing we'd saved enough supplies for such an occasion, eh?

"Jen, what- what happened?" she mumbled. Before I can open my mouth, the morlocks scream a new chorus. I spot a blue door behind the remains of the mannequin, and drag her there.

We limp past a painting of a thin woman reducing men to pieces and force ourselves through the door. We stumble through dark corridors, up steep flights of stairs, and finally into the warm orange light of a subway stop. This one is deserted, and for once that makes me glad. It's silent, at long last, and we slump against the reddish tiles. We pant like dogs, pain in our heads. Natalie laughs first, then I do. It feels great to not be dead.

I hug her; feel her cold cheek against mine. "What...now?" she whispers. I glance above us. A sign tells us where we are.

**RED LINE: NEDSON SQUARE – EXIT AT ST. DERLETH'S HOSPITAL**

"Let's find some proper medical care," I say. "Maybe the others are there too."

"Maybe..." she echoes. I help her to her feet, not sure which one of us looks sicklier, and we start our way across the station. I've been through Nedson Square before. If any survivors are still out there, they'd hole up at the hospital.

They have to.


End file.
